slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Miz Jazz Update

    I just realized that I haven’t updated y’all about Miz Jazz’s progress. She’s doing pretty good! The vet decided that the best course of action was to start with her teeth. She extracted four teeth – leaving her with only four teeth including two fangs. Jazz had broken two teeth and two teeth were badly decayed. She had lost another half pound to 4.5 lbs! No wonder she was losing weight.

    They did another blood test and her thyroid is okay and her BUN (kidney) levels were actually a little better! Thank God because treating the thyroid would be toxic to the kidneys.

    Her x-rays showed that her back and hips are very arthritic, but at least that meant that it wasn’t an injury that requires surgery. She is still hobbling badly though, so we’ll need to work on that once she is finished with these antibiotics. The chiropractor wanted to wait until she is recovered from the dental surgery. The vet said that she thought that Jazz would definitely benefit from chiropractic.

    I was really worried because she was just licking her food and I knew that we had to get more food into her because of our experience with Squirt. I was afraid that she was associating food with pain. But Monday morning that little girl chowed down. She ate twice as much as usual and she’s been eating normally ever since.

  • Cleaning for a reason

    From my church newsletter, a very good idea!

    If you know any woman currently undergoing cancer treatment, please pass the word to her that there is a cleaning service that provides FREE housecleaning – once per month for 4 months while she is in treatment. All she has to do is sign up and have her doctor fax a note confirming the treatment. “Cleaning for a Reason” will attempt to match her with a participating maid service in her zip code area and arrange for the service. This organization serves the entire USA
    and currently has 547 partners to help these women. It’s our job to pass the word and let them know that there are people out there that care. Be a blessing to someone and pass this information along. Currently, there are “partner” cleaning companies located in High Point and Durham.

    If you don’t know someone that is undergoing treatment for cancer, maybe you know someone that is in the “cleaning business” that would be interested in becoming part of the program.

    http://www.cleaningforareason.org/

  • A leap of faith

    First, a Miz Jazz report. I forgot about her possible hyperthyroidism. The vet probably missed it when she was talking to us. It may be a good thing in a way because it would keep her appetite up. The fluids absolutely definitely help and I’m glad that Sandy was talked into it. He was basing his feelings on our experience with Squirt, but poor little Squirt was pretty much on his way out when we started those fluids. Believe me, I may not remember something important I did yesterday, but I remember every detail of Squirt’s last days.

    She has decided that she does not want the renal food after all and wants to eat her Friskies Senior with the rest of the gang as usual. On the other hand, Guido is just mad for the new food. The other two couldn’t care less. Lucy only gets excited over fresh greens. So we’re going to mix the renal food with the Friskies, add the supplement, and feed it to both Jazz and Guido. Guido has almost certainly been in renal failure for a while, but I decided not to put him through any prolonged medical treatment after the last time with his abcess and dental surgery. He was tested and his BUN levels were borderline. He gets too stressed out if you try to handle him – he doesn’t even like to be picked up. So his next vet visit will be his last, I’m sorry to say. It will have to be his time because he is too miserable when he has to be given medication.

    The experience this week has been exhausting for us both. Sandy, in particular, is taking it very hard. Once he accepted that it was time for her to die it has been difficult for him to pull back from that dark place, because he has brought the reality of a Jazz-less future to the front of his mind. I have been preparing for both her and Guido mentally for at least a couple of years, but that’s my personality. Always planning ahead. That’s one reason that practicing mindfullness is so good for me – being in the present is a break for my brain. In this situation, though, I can say that it has helped me get through it much more easily. With Squirt I was in denial almost up to his death – I can clearly remember the day that I fully realized that he had no chance of recovery, only one week before he left us.

    Okay, time to get out of the past. (Shaking head vigorously, jaws flapping.)

    I slept a good bit yesterday, watched episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and House on Hulu on the laptop in bed, reading The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin now, basically laid in bed so much that I am really creaky this morning.

    I picked the last of the butterbeans and basil and I’ll be freezing pesto today. I hope to have enough butterbeans for two servings. There are still carrots in the raised bed. I probably ought to plant garlic today if I’m going to do it since the garlic farmers I know are all planting right now.

    Here’s the thing: that Tarot reading a week ago. It has really gotten my brain whirring. How she said that I needed to figure out what sparks my passion now, what I’m doing because I feel like I should be doing it, and what I have learned enough from that I need to let go and change partnerships. It has made me think about how I have been so much less enthusiastic about gardening and cooking and food writing. Not that I plan to move away from how I mainly eat – homegrown or local when possible, after that organic, after that as healthy as I can manage it without feeling totally deprived. (In other words, I occasionally eat a cheeseburger or drink a milkshake.)

    Or it could be about Jazz. But I don’t think so. She said that the cards meant that if I am careful to spend money for my passion and not for what I am doing out of feeling the “should” weight, then the money for the kitty will take care of itself. That a great opportunity awaits me and I have a large group of people who support me. The most important thing that I took away from it was that she said that I need to take a leap of faith and make my decision and own it. Whatever happens I will land on my feet or I will fly.

    As I’ve said, I don’t believe in the Tarot as a supernatural force. (Or am I so sure? Hoo boy.) I am a very logical, non-leaper of faith. I’ve always thought that my middle name, which is Faith, was ironic. But I keep coming back to thinking about this reading. I’ve looked up the cards and the meaning of the spread. It was amazingly positive. The Sun. The Chariot. The Fool. The Queen of Wands. The Lovers. And, as always, the Hermit. I always get the Hermit.

    Then yesterday morning, when discussing our decision about euthanizing Miz Jazz with Dr. Hunt, she related an example of a 19-year-old cat with renal disease and a bad tooth, who survived having the tooth extracted and was chasing squirrels. “Sometimes,” she said, “you have to take a leap of faith.”

    I was stunned. And here we are – I’m owning it. I still wonder if this is the decision that I am to make. All the other cards point in the direction of my artwork, so maybe it is the first one. Who knows – life is so mysterious. I wish it was more logical, but there you go.

  • Miz Jazz update – the reprieve

    Miss Jazz saw Dr. Hunt this morning. We both needed to be reassured that it was time to let her go. She didn’t seem ready to die. We asked Dr. Hunt to tell us why we needed to do it again.

    Dr. Hunt said that she remembered seeing her when she was last in (she was examined both times by another vet there) and that she looks better, said that if it was her cat she would wait. She agreed that she would have euthanized her the way she was last week, but based on her behavior and the way she looks and even her facial expression she didn’t think that she was ready to die either. And that with fluids she could get much better, and we may be able to extract her tooth.

    So Miss Jazz is getting a change in pain meds, subcu fluids, and a chiropractor visit on Wed. Possible tooth extraction in future. We have to get food into her. I’m watering down her food and I’m going to make some pure chicken broth to mix with it today, since I learned with Squirt’s CRF that the onions in commercial broth are not good for cats.

    Sandy is concerned about the emotional toll this is taking on both of us, but we both feel much better about this decision. We would never have felt right if we had gone the other way. It won’t be easy, but I do think that this vet would have told us if the quality of her life was bad or hopeless enough to send her on ahead of us.

    As an example of how much better both of us feel, Sandy just told Jazz to shut up.

    Onward. I’ve got pesto to make, doodling to do, books to bind, beer to drink, and naps to take this weekend.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Angst alert – there will be much of it in today’s post. I just fired up another pot of coffee.

    Sandy scheduled an appointment at the vet for Miss Jazz’s euthanasia at 10:30 this morning. It is now 8:00.

    Yesterday and the night before I moaned and cried because I was so sure of the need to let her go today, and at the same time it is so hard to choose the time to let a companion of 16+ years go. I came home yesterday afternoon and she ate heartily, hopping around on one back leg, and her fur was back to its sleek beauty.

    Sandy came home from work and I told him that she did seem to be feeling better. He burst into tears and told me that he had made the appointment and didn’t know what to do. I burst into tears and said that I didn’t know what to do either. He decided not to give her the pain med injection tonight and reassess the situation. She didn’t seem to miss it. She crawled up into the bed with us like any normal morning and licked my face before settling down on my chest. Sandy said that she was playing with him on Thursday night.

    Earlier Thursday night she jumped up on a high stool, to my surprise. Before I could get to her, she jumped down. I wonder if that is what caused her so much pain that night.

    So we are torn up about this decision. She is not behaving like a cat who is ready to die. But I know that I hung on to Squirt for much too long before I let him go. I was so depressed anyway with the things going on in my life that losing him was unthinkable to me. I’d long considered it to be the worst possible prospect on the horizon, and I didn’t think that I could survive it. I felt bad that I caused him greater suffering because of my needs, but I have forgiven myself. That doesn’t mean that I want to repeat it with Jazz.

    She is not laying around all the time. She goes to the litterbox on her own, which is actually an improvement. She trots around for what seems to be no good reason. She is eating and drinking. But we know that she is in terrible pain. She has a fractured tooth, her neck is all knotted up in spasms, and she twists one of her back feet under her body to make up for not putting weight on the other.

    She is in the middle stages of chronic renal failure anyway. She probably has hyperthyroidism (the test was negative, but the vet thinks that the test was wrong) but treating it will make the CRF worse. That is what happened to Squirt. Her heart murmur has gotten better with the heart medicine we’ve given her.

    So our choice is to spend a huge amount of money on treatment that she will likely not survive anyway, and if she does, her kidneys are failing and she will not recover from that. And she is very old.

    Or we can pump her full of pain meds and fluids and pamper and love her until she stops eating on her own and make this decision later.

    Or we can take her to the vet this morning at 10:30 and say goodbye to her.

    Ay yi yi.

  • arghh

    I keep trying to write this but it’s tough – Miss Jazz really needs to be euthanized. Both Sandy and I know it, but Sandy isn’t ready yet. Just as he knew it with Squirt but I wasn’t ready yet. So I’m trying hard to be compassionate to them both. But the pain medication that I am injecting Jazz with twice a day doesn’t seem to be helping her much. She seems to be broken. Every day she limps worse and last night she cried no matter how gently I tried to handle her. I cried myself to sleep last night and cried again this morning. Sandy is wrecked. He called me from work this morning and said that he might be ready tomorrow, but he thought that she was feeling better. She is not feeling better. Of course she enjoys attention and cuddling.

    Gotta go. Somebody’s knocking at the door.

  • Journalfest 2010


    Journalfest was, as expected, another awesome experience. I flew to Seattle and took a shuttle bus over to Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. The town itself is beautiful and if I did nothing but walk its beaches and explore its shops and restaurants for a week, I’m sure that I would have been happy. However, I got to combine this beautiful place with inspiring art classes with three top instructors and great food!

    The first day I took Painted Pocket Journals with Roxanne Padgett. This is taking me in more of the direction that I’m interested in exploring – fabric/fibers combined with book arts. We painted and stenciled fabric with gesso and acrylic paints, then stitched and fused them together to make folded covers for books. Pure play for me, and I loved it so much that I forgot to take photos. Sorry! But I did take a photo of the journal that I made for Journalfest in this class. I will be filling it with my thoughts, photos, and drawings of Journalfest. I have many ideas for this as far as little cloth journals for sale on Etsy and at the Indie Market.

    Thursday evening brought a bonfire on the beach and a journaling party in the building next to it, heated by a woodstove. Believe it or not, I think that I had my first s’more at this party. I don’t remember ever eating a s’more before. I’ve camped a lot, but mostly in 18th century reenactments, and I’ve never been fond of marshmallows. Yes, it was good!

    Because I was on East Coast time, I woke up before dawn every day and wandered out to the beach to take photos as the sun came up. I explored past the limits of the state park this time so that I was legally allowed to gather beach stones. Here is my favorite photo, taken on Friday morning before Orly Avineri’s “Mapping Me” class.

    On Friday afternoon after class, I walked a mile up a steep hill and back down into downtown Port Townsend for dinner. I had company. The deer in Port Townsend are like squirrels here – everywhere and quite used to people. Unfortunately, most of the town there rolls up the sidewalks at 6 p.m. so I wasn’t able to explore the galleries. I did get to eat a delectable, decadent seafood/wild mushroom pasta at the Fountain Cafe.

    I could hardly hope for better weather that they had when I was there. It was chilly, but mostly sunny and I was able to see the mountains clearly across the water. A local that I met on the beach told me of a good place to find sea glass, so I set out in the dark. I didn’t make it to that beach, but I watched the sunrise sitting on a rock below Point Wilson Lighthouse before I realized that I had been so enrapt in the beauty that I didn’t notice that I was very underdressed and freezing! It is hard to take good photos when your hands are shaking.

    So I went back for breakfast and Jody England Hansen’s “Finding Your Niche” class.

    This class was good for me – I really want to include found objects in my work, and so I’ve been trying on my own to create niches and doors. I’m not very good at the technique. I wasn’t very good at it in this class, either, so I won’t post the photo of one work in progress until I get a chance to get it to a point where I’m happy with it. Jodi gave me a lot of useful information and good advice though. She has arthritis in her hands so has the same issues that I have with pain. She repeated, “Persuade the fibers to part,” don’t fight with them. In other words, make many light strokes with the craft knife instead of bearing down and getting in a hurry. We also poured resin over objects in shells and niches – what fun! I can’t wait to play more with resin!

    I’ve been saving this book to use for my Alaska journal – I made rather a mess with another one its size on my own, trying to make niches in the text block. Jodi used it for a demo and promptly removed the text block, saying that it was perfect for a box. It turns out she was exactly right, and I now have a great structure to contain my Alaska travel journal and some stones and other natural items that I picked up on the trip. I’ll take another photo when I’m done collaging and painting it.

    I felt powerful and blessed and courageous and strong on this trip.

    Now I am ready for Journalfest 2011!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Just fired up my second little pot of coffee. I have a lot of blogging that I want to do! First I need to sweep out the cobwebs of my brain, and that means it is coffee pot post time. Lots of stuff happened this past week. I’ll address Journalfest in a different post.

    I missed my connection on the way back from Seattle and had to spend the night in Atlanta Sunday night. The plane in Seattle rolled out of the gate on time, but turned back “for a passenger,” according to the pilot. I heard later in the shuttle bus full of Delta passengers on the way to the Days Inn that it may have been that there were two dogs on the plane without an owner present. Now that I can understand turning back for, but how the hell did that happen?

    And boy, lemme tell ya, it was a squeaker. I had ten minutes before my plane took off, and it was on the other side of the airport. In the hope that it might be delayed too, I ran like a maniac through the airport, up escalators, down escalators, huffing and puffing and nearly having a heart attack by the time I got there. The plane was still outside the gate so I asked the agent at the next gate to call them to see if I could board. The plane was full because they gave my seat away. I burst into tears, mainly because I was so tired. It reminded me of that Joan Cusack scene in the movie Broadcast News except hers were hysterical relief tears.

    So Delta gave me $12 for food and a room in the Days Inn for the night. I ended up with a day missed at work and when I finally got my luggage delivered to my house my favorite suitcase was twisted. Most of the stuff inside was okay, but I wasn’t very happy with Delta, needless to say. I mean, it was just luck that I made my connection on the way out to Seattle but at least that was due to weather.

    I didn’t sleep in Atlanta, and I had trouble sleeping all week – just anxiety, I guess. I finally got rested up this weekend.

    My thoughts were mainly consumed with the inspiration I am still carrying from Journalfest, the election, getting ready for the Indie Market, and Miss Jazz’s health. The Indie Market was cold, and I didn’t sell anything. But I enjoyed being a part of it anyway. I am buying Mandie’s pop-up tent for future shows.

    Miss Jazz started limping about 2-3 weeks ago. She is 16 1/2 years old and has always been grouchy and uncoordinated, and she all but asks for the other cats to torture her by growling and slapping them when they are just minding their own business. Calico cats are notoriously grumpy. Still, we feel sorry for her. She would have been much happier as the only fur-child, and she and Sandy adore each other. He was the one who adopted her – she was found trotting down High Point Road (a very busy 4+ lane street in Greensboro) when she was small enough to fit in his shirt pocket, and has always been the spunkiest and smartest cat we ever had.

    Anyway, by Thursday, I knew that it wasn’t something that she would get over on her own, so she went to the vet yesterday morning. Two hours and $275 later, we found out that her neck is terribly out of whack, she has a heart murmur and likely hyperthyroidism, a broken tooth, and probably a ligament injury in her back leg. So we have to weigh the options and carefully plan her treatment and care. There will be much more money spent just to be able to make that decision. They don’t want to do x-rays without anesthesia, and the anesthesia will be dangerous with the heart problem. However, if we treat her thyroid, that will be easy and her heart murmur will likely clear up. In the meantime, she is in awful pain and we are giving her opiates and heart meds this weekend. Monday she’ll spend the day at the vet, hopefully having an EKG/ultrasound if they can get the radiologist there, and having x-rays under light sedation, and her blood work results should be in about her kidneys.

    I know what you’re thinking. She’s old, she’s had a good life, maybe the scales have tipped in favor of letting her go. This is Sandy’s ultimate decision to make. Right now, she still gets enjoyment out of life. She eats well, can use the litterbox when she chooses to, and can get up on the beds and the furniture. We will probably shut her into the computer room with her own litterbox and food when we are not here so that she can be guaranteed peace from the other cats.

    But still, Miss Jazz may not have many more days left in this life. I hope that her next life will be just as lucky. We will miss her.

    Yesterday afternoon Sandy and I took good naps then went down to a Local Arts Festival on State St. I got to see Chandra (an artist I met through our passion for mixed media and the Art & Soul retreat) and I had a tarot card reading.

    I am fascinated with the Tarot. I don’t really believe that there is anything paranormal about it, but I do believe that it is an excellent tool for helping you sort out your thoughts and maybe seeing sides of issues that you wouldn’t have noticed before. However, I can’t help but find it very, very odd that The Hermit shows up in nearly every card spread I have had. This time it was the first card. It combined with a lot of very positive cards, like The Fool, The Sun, The Queen of Wands, and the Chariot. Basically, the interpreter said that I have a great opportunity coming, and that The Fool card means that I should take a leap of faith. Whatever I choose, I will either land on my feet or I will fly.

    And on that note, I will end this coffee pot post and go change my clocks!

  • Back to reality

    Ugh. I will not address yesterday, at all. I’m going to plant my head firmly in the sand and pray silently.

    I do plan to blog my Journalfest trip. Yes, I know that I said that about Charleston and then I didn’t. Who knows, I might do both.

    I mainly took a lot of nature shots on this trip and not many class photos at all. In a way, that is good. I was heavily into what I was doing and the thought of taking more photos didn’t occur to me. I’ll take some photos of the fabric books I made in Roxanne Padgett’s class and the results of Jodi England Hansen’s class once I finish those two books.

    Boy, do I wish that I had a few free days to use the ideas and techniques I learned at Journalfest in time to create some new books for sale at the Indie Market on Friday. I have decided to sell the two books that I posted about, but I won’t have much else new until December.

    Will update later, really, I promise. Journalfest and Port Townsend were fabulous.

  • Heading to Journalfest at the break of dawn

    I thought I’d share photos of my last two books with you before I go. I’ll be offline until Monday. I’m sure that I’ll have lots of photos when I get back, but somehow I doubt that I can top the photos I took of that sunrise last year.

    This book began with a discarded book titled “Another Spring.” It grew organically from the title. I pasted fibery rough handmade corn husk paper to the outside cover and spine. A vintage printed plate of eggs went on the front cover and a plate of songbirds went on the back. I covered these areas with mica sheets. The inside covers have monoprints of leaves on handmade iris paper, and the signature pages are composed of earthy handmade natural papers that contain corn shucks, iris leaves, okra stalks, artichoke stalks and globes, abaca, cotton, and bits and pieces of whatever was on hand that day. Finally, I bound the book with linen longstitch binding and sewed driftwood twigs to the spine.

    I had a lot of fun with this one. Here’s the description I wrote for Etsy if and when I put it up there.

    Are you afraid of color? Scared of the white blank page? I’ve taken care of that for you. This book has every color in the rainbow. I painted the covers and eight pages with complete abandon and joy. There are pages with colored recycled papers, made with discarded office files, onion skins, bits of cellophane, and a little cotton to make them strong. The binding, with fuzzy spun recycled sari fabric strips and strong linen, will lay flat. Great for collage, too, if you don’t like the colors – paint or glue something over it to make it yours!