Cat Found, an Emotional Day

 I saw something that looked like a cat in the bushes of my backyard around noon today. It wasn't our lost cat, Biggie, but a bigger cat, which after I spotted him/her, quickly jumped up on the fence and escaped to a different yard. Meanwhile, I also saw a smaller, skinny cat streak out of the same bushes, and this one definitely was Biggie.

But he seemed so disoriented and frightened. First he jumped straight into the fish pond, then ran around the yard as if he were crazy. As I tried to calm him down he once again fled into the bushes. I yelled for the kids to come out back and all three did.

We started stalking him, trying to contain him to some area where we might be able to pick him up, calm him down, and get him back into the house.

Despite the kids' sweet words and outreached arms, he continued to act crazy, running here and there and twice more falling into the (very cold) pond.

Finally, in an odd turn of events, he raced up the stairs and into our apartment, after which they picked him up, wrapped him in towels and blankets, dried and warmed him, and convinced him to start eating food and drinking water.

Tonight, he appears back near to his "normal" self. I have taken down the "lost cat" signs.

Tonight, my daughter played soccer and her team won its first game of the spring season, 1-0. She played brilliantly on defense, making many strong kicks up the sideline after stripping the ball from strikers. At some point in the second half, it became clear she was hurt. She'd injured a toe on one of those violent foot-to-foot collisions so common in soccer.

"Are you okay, Julia?" her coach yelled from the sideline.

"I'm fine," she said.

After the game she limped next to me, her shoe off, her toe swollen, as we got to our car.

***

Tonight is her 18-year-old brother's senior prom. He took his girlfriend. This morning we picked up the flowers they are wearing tonight. "To tell you the truth, Dad, it doesn't matter all that much to me, this three-hour dance, but it does to her. I'm just happy to be there with her."

-30-

Tragedy in Boston, a Lost Cat Here

It was an odd week on many levels. Like most people, I was horrified by what happened in Boston on Monday. I was in a board meeting when one of my fellow board members said his niece had texted him that two bombs had gone off at the Boston Marathon.

Like many people I watched much of the coverage all week, culminating tonight in the apprehension of the second of two suspects in Watertown. What drove two young men, allegedly the bombers, to commit this awful act may now become known, since one of them survived the shootouts with police before his arrest.

***

Yesterday afternoon, on a hot day, I had the back door open. That is something I rarely have done since we got our cat. This time, however, with the heat and the smell of cat pee throughout our apartment, I needed to air things out.

In the mid-afternoon, the cat peed again, on the carpet and then, no doubt aware of my displeasure, skulked out the back door, down the stairs, and disappeared.

He's been ill the past few months with an auto-immune disease, and on steroids as a result. His behavior has grown increasingly bizarre. From almost no appetite he developed a voracious appetite. He even broke into a package of English muffins one night.

He started jumping up on the toilet and drinking from it during the night.

Then there is the pee -- everywhere, including on my daughter's lap the other night and the couch where I typically sit and work all day.

He stopped grooming himself, to the point where when he approached the kids they shrunk back, held their noses, and said "Eeew!" My daughter gave him repeated shampoos, but still the stench prevailed.

Today I reported him missing to animal control and placed posters on light poles and fliers in my neighbors' mailboxes. But there's no sign and no word of him anywhere around here.

I feel almost certain he is gone for good. He is so unhealthy he could never survive for long on his own, plus he has stopped taking his medication as of yesterday. I leave food out back and periodically call for him, but there is no sound in return.

-30-

birthday birthday

A beautiful day here in San Francisco, surrounded with four of my children and two grandchildren and a son-in-law, I couldn't have asked for a nicer day. Plus the Giants came from behind for yet another win; they've started the season 9-4.

My two year old grand-daughter can already sing a version of "Happy Birthday."

My 18-year-old drew and composed the most loving messages on the card he made for me I can imagine a young man of his age expressing.

Dozens of friends sent birthday greetings, many on Facebook.

On any level I am blessed.

-30-

Life as a One-Sided Sandwich

Every now and then it would be nice to romanticize things but let's face it, mostly life is a collection of mundane details. Often these details organize themselves into familiar patterns. But other times they randomly re-sort, introducing chaos.

This has been a week of juggling a set of odd details on many levels...everything from social security to laptop repair (the Apple Store rocks) to how to get the smell of cat pee out of the carpet (yuck). How to interpret a child's diagnosis with ADHD in an era when they seem to face constant distractions in the form of never-ending text messages and social media updates. How to advise a kid trying to figure out which of ten colleges that accepted him to attend, without going into crushing debt in the process (nearly impossible for many).

How to advise an 8th grader how to handle major high school admission disappointments in a big city where such things are decided mostly by lottery. Feeling helpless as her grades fall after years of nearly all A's -- clearly this transition has upended her attention to details at school. Talk about an attention disorder!

After all of that and more on the personal front, there's the work projects -- blogging over and over; while beginning to research some large investigative projects for the first time in many years; cutting back on my "consulting" business that chronically failed to launch anyway.

Everything changes, nothing changes. Some of the harsher edges of recent reality fade as new dilemmas emerge just so the unending roughness can still be there to remind you that we're all screwed in the end.

In the midst of all that, seeing an old friend for the first time in a couple years. Connecting lifts a cloud you didn't even know was enshrouding your demeanor. Talking for hours, catching up, just enjoying each other's company.

Politics, business, family. Stories, writing, options. Government and its follies.

Whatever you think of government, I say Thank God (or at least FDR) for social security. I paid into it for over 40 years and now a bit comes back to me every month, which will help enormously with the ongoing financial stress of being an aging parent with three teens heading to college. With being a writer in an era where we are no longer valued (in terms of money) by a society that pays engineers $180/hour and a blogger something south of the minimum wage.

Not to knock engineers. I write about what they create, with wonder, every week.

I get pitched by PR folks every day. I can only write about a small number of the companies they pitch me, but these pitches cover a wide swath of topics, products, industries, services, ideas and inventions.

The PR reps try very hard to catch the attention of journalists like me. One this week approached me enthusiastically, saying that she was sure I was part of the "sandwich generation," i.e., sandwiched between caring for ailing, aged parents while still raising kids of my own.

Well, wrong on point A but right on point B, I had to point out to her, not so gently. (True to tell, I was flattered that she thought me younger than I am. Or, maybe she is a poor judge of physical age.) Embarrassed, at first she couldn't believe it was true. Then she was sorry it was true and offered to buy me lunch.

You see, I then more gently explained to her, I lost my parents over a decade ago and now *I* am in fact the family elder, on social security, with six children (three teens) and five grandchildren. I suppose that makes me a sandwich with only one slice of bread.

Now, from a certain perspective, you could say I am lucky that I do not have to split my time, money and energy between my own parents and my kids.

But I don't see it that way. I feel like my life would be much richer if my Mom and Dad were still here, regardless of what financial pressure that might entail.

That's because I miss them, as I have every day since they died. I miss our conversations.

This, at base, is what "memoir" consists of. Our memories, especially of others, and of ourselves in relationship to them, once they are lost to us, leaves us feeling like a slice of pastrami with bread still below us but only emptiness above.

Whenever I start feeling hopeless about my own place here in this chaotic world, and wonder whether this world might not be better off without me here, (I can give you 100,000 reasons why), I eventually somehow revisit these emotions. In the immortal words of Smokey Robinson, I "second that emotion," you know, the one about love.

True love. Which is, finally, about loving yourself, stupid!

-30-

Connect Only

Since I was a teenager, I've been acutely aware of how dependent I am on the tools that define a big part of my life. Even though my fantasies were of escaping into nature and living on my own, without any modern tools. (My father had the same fantasy, as I discovered in his writings after he died.) Maybe we all share these ideas and hopes?

Cars for example. Every time one of my cars has suffered a breakdown, my blood pressure has accelerated. The funny thing is that the actual process of getting the car fixed the past 50 years has almost always been a very positive experience, connecting me to those who can get the machine going again.

Getting me back on the road again.

In this era, it is my computer and lately my iPhone that is every bit as important as my scarred old car. I am so joined with my battered laptop that it feels literally like an extension of my body. How could I live without my computer?

It is the main channel through which I remain connected with the world. And the main way (along with NPR and TV News) how I figure out what is going on with the world. Except for the occasional speech or hand-written letter, it is the only way I tell the world my own stories.

Yet today I had to let my computer go. The four year old beast had become practically dysfunctional. Since it is still under warrant, Apple is trying to repair it. We'll see how that goes.

Yet I am back online, recovering my voice, connecting and communicating, thanks to another laptop. That is another story.

-30-

Happy Birthday, Son!

Finally, Soccer Again

Now it feels like spring. My daughter was off school this week for spring break and spent a lot of time with me. We got her new soccer shoes (purple), she dyed her long ponytail (red), and she framed some of her art excuse the flash.)