Thankful for Thanksgiving

Ahhh, yes, it is one of my favorite holidays. I get all Clark Griswald about it sometimes, even. I love turkey, and everything that goes with it. The best thing about Thanksgiving, though, is the pause we take to really evaluate all the blessings of the year. How happy we are that our son is thriving and excelling in his chosen field at college. How great it is that our mom is still in fairly good health. How gratifying it is to have a great job at a school we love. To meet new friends, to adopt new sweet kittens, to find a super awesome lawn and snow guy who actually takes pride in his work! 

This year I'm also thankful that I am in better health.  I have lost more than a hundred pounds since my heaviest ever, and my blood pressure is no longer dangerously high. In the spring, I will be able to continue my trek to fitness with a double knee replacement. I feel like my life is beginning again, and I want to embrace it with open arms.

My wish for all my friends and family this Thanksgiving is that you look around yourselves and really notice all the positive things in your life. It has been a rough year, I'm not denying, but we are stronger and wiser for it. Enjoy being with the people who love you and whom you love.  Happy Turkey Day!

Tenth anniversary

The ten year anniversary of a monumental tragedy in our nation has me filled with dread. Not that I’ll be reminded of the helplessness of that day, the dread and fear for the future of our country, or that I’ll feel overwhelming grief over the thousands that died that day.

My angst this time around is that these events will be hyped and rehashed in the media, in classrooms and in the virulent hate-filled splinter groups that have sprung up since then. The re-living, the re-imagining, in their minds, serves to whip Americans into another frenzy of hate that erupted on that day against ALL “Arab/Muslim” people, no matter what their political leanings or personal histories.

I had eventually begun to feel that as bad as the tragedy had been, perhaps it could have served to remind us that we, as Americans, are not the center of the universe, and that our casual disregard of cultures and religions different from our own would wake people up to things going on in today’s world, make people WANT to learn about another faith, to understand it and discover how Americans might be mistaken in their acknowledgment of it. To my horror, the ‘tolerance’ that I had taken for granted as being GUARANTEED in the U.S. Constitution evaporated before my eyes.

Not only were Arab immigrants treated as a threat, ANY immigrants came to be hated and mistrusted and basically told to “go back to where you came from”.  In my lifetime, as a second generation American granddaughter of European immigrants, I had never witnessed such hate toward immigrants. People like me, whose ancestors were ALL immigrants started to act like they had never encountered anyone from outside of the U.S., nor did they ever want to.

The timing of 9/11 and the ten-year anniversary of it are bookends to my residence in Rochester, Minnesota, where I work as an ESL teacher to students from around the globe. I have counseled many students since that day, trying to reassure them that not all Americans hated them, and that they have as much right to be here as anyone else.

I felt in 2008 that the election of an African American president was a step in the right direction, but I see now that it has only permitted people to express their hatred even more openly, disguising it with politics or anything BUT what it actually is: hatred. I’m not giving up on the U.S., though, because I feel that it is like a wounded butterfly—beautiful and fragile, but still able to survive. That is what I will be focusing on next week.

The outsourcing blues

I consider myself a citizen of the world, and I really make an effort to understand the global economy. I want to be tolerant, and I want to receive satisfactory customer service for products that I buy and use. So, I have a considerable amount of angst about outsourced call centers. I know that their existence is often made light of and joked about by comedians, pundits, popular culture. I also understand the economic reason for their existence to better the company's bottom line. I must admit that actually dealing with them on a pretty regular basis has been somewhat of a wash for me.


I have a way I prefer to communicate with phone contacts of companies. I usually start out being as polite and sweet as apple pie, but then when my issue is not resolved within, say 15 to 20 minutes of waiting, talking to a computer voice, being put on hold, I start to lose my polite voice. It is my weakness and character flaw, and I have come pretty close to blowing a gasket on several different occasions. I have even worked a phone switchboard as a temporary job, so I guess I know a little about what I'm complaining about. Problem solving skills and initiative to find a solution are two skills that most employees need, and especially customer service personnel. Obtuse denial that there even IS a problem is not a good starting point for me with a phone operator.

Anyway, my major hideous billing issue with a certain cell phone company that loves the color pink was FINALLY resolved today after nearly 2 days straight on the phone. I wish I had kept my cool through it all, but sadly, I did not, and I will have to live with that.

Summertime, and the living is. . .

I usually relish August. There is a laziness about it; a careless expectation of finishing summer projects, MAYBE. The weather may be stifling, as it has been many summers, or gorgeous, as it has been so far this summer. For some reason, this year, though I have never noticed it before, cicadas buzz incessantly in the atmosphere here in southern Minnesota, a sound I had previously associated only with hotter, more southern areas I have lived. It is comforting and almost hypnotic.


This summer has been difficult, too. My cat, Charlie had been injured and euthanized, and several weeks later, my other older cat, Rufie, disappeared as well. Assuming, but never really KNOWING, that she was dead, I had to just go on, without closure. This had happened to two other felines, previously, as well, since we have lived here in this location. Not wanting to believe that a strange, mentally ill neighbor would actually do something to harm my pets, I have had to quell my desire to confront his elderly parents about it.

My two new kittens, Louie and Lily, will have to be mostly indoor cats, I guess, since I can't live with the regret that something I did contributed to their safety. I love the idea that cats can explore and roam in the yard, but I guess in OUR yard, that will have to end.

 
Anyway, the summer is coasting to a beautiful close, as my dear Nathan readies himself for his second year of college. There is the expectation for a new school year, hope for new adventures, meeting new people, expanding both our horizons. The house will seem so empty and quiet, no murmurs from the basement, and I will have to busy myself with school and reading.

He was a good cat. . .

The hardest thing about having pets is deciding when and if to end their suffering. You have a reluctance to end a life, that you choose, and you have a sadness of missing the animal after he's gone. You also have a responsibility to do the right thing, which is usually one of the hardest things you could ever do. To watch a loving, sweet pet languish in their own body fluids, not able or wanting to move, eat or drink is more than I can take for very long. I am lucky to have a sensitive and caring veterinarian, Mike Morath, who understands and supports my pets and their quality of life. I will miss my sweet baby, but he is not suffering now. Maybe if God cares about animals, like I hope He does, I'll see him again someday.

Charlie

When I refer to millions of cats, I don't really mean that I love all cats, or that I have a million of them. I have only one now that I love more than any cat I've had for a long time. When we got Charlie from Craigslist two years ago in August, we looked like this picture. He had been abandoned by his mom, and when he came in the car with me, he immediately snuggled into my shoulder and claimed me as his new mom. He loves just being near me and often sits in front of the computer monitor as I work. However, last night, something happened to him and he got injured somehow, and since it's the Fourth, no vets are available except the local emergency, for HUGE profit, veterinary clinic. Our regular vet in Plainview is out of town, so the soonest we can get him in there is tomorrow morning. I'm broken up over it, and I hope it's something that we can fix and he can recover from. I know that cats are really resilient, so I won't give up hope for my favorite baby. I know he's just an animal, but he makes my life worth living a lot of days.

Bullying is not okay. . .

I just read an article today in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a survey done among GLBT kids in Minnesota. The results of the survey were disturbing and disheartening, in this Minnesota GBLT bullying article , but not really surprising. As a veteran teacher of 33 years, I have seen my share of bullying. I don't tolerate it in my classroom, but what goes on in hallways, outside the school building, in hidden areas like locker rooms, or elsewhere, I really have no control over. Kids have gotten meaner, emboldened by shock videos, movies, popular culture where demeaning for just about any reason is used for entertainment value. I try to teach tolerance along with my usual curriculum, so I know that I am not intentionally adding to the problem. My attitudes are not shared by everyone, of course, not even all my teaching colleagues. If you stand aside and say nothing when people are being not only physically bullied, but verbally and emotionally bullied, then you are part of the problem. The world is big, and cat bullies might be cute, but people bullies are the ugliest monsters I can imagine.

This is harder than I thought. . .

I started this blog years ago, and with Facebook popping up, I kind of deserted it. I don't drink TAB anymore, so I thought that was an inappropriate reference to me. I do still love cats, and I feel that my life wouldn't be complete without them. If I meet a fellow cat lover, I know that I have something in common. If I meet a cat hater, well, let's just say I have some issues right out of the gate. I snaked the title from a favorite childhood book called Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. In the book, which was really quite twisted, a man and woman decided they were lonely, so the husband goes off in search of a cat to please his wife. He eventually ends up with millions of cats following him home, and even though the wife is happy, she realizes they can't care for that many cats. She decides to have a contest and asks the question, "which of you is the prettiest?" A huge bloody cat fight ensues until all the cats are obliterated except for one skinny ugly one. They decide to keep the loner and nurture it into a beautiful, sleek pet that they both love. I always loved reading the book and the art work was charming. I'm not sure what message it sends, but I'm okay with that. I know that appearance isn't everything, especially with cats, and even more with people.