My Deal with Elliana

Elliana made a comment about wishing she had packed differently in case she went to inpatient treatment. I spent as much time as I could letting her know that I love that change in her attitude. As we talked more about it, she feels that she has nothing but clothes that are hers. She also said that she knows that when she completes treatment, she will just be handed around to anybody who will take her until she is old enough to dump on the streets.

That is some tremendous weight to carry. However, it is a weight that she carries because of her behavior.

How Elliana and I Got Where We Are Through OUR Bad Decisions

Most of her things had already been packed when she awoke yesterday. Unlike the days leading up to yesterday, we would be packing Elliana's everyday items on her final day with me. She had a place to go, but I felt there was little chance that it would work out for long. The last time she tried to be with her grandmother, it lasted four days and ended up with Elliana moving in with me as a last resort.

Bryan had been so much more than fair when he allowed me to take care of her despite there really being no room for her at home. 

My Baby is Out of Time

Even though my love for each of my children and grandchildren is equal, my devotion to Elliana over her seventeen years has exceeded what I have done for the others. We had an instant connection. When she got her shots as a baby, I got a call from her dad saying she wouldn't quit crying. He had checked her diaper and tried to give her a bottle. I told him I'd be right over. I took her and just held her. For a couple of hours, I just held her so that she would sleep peacefully while her dad and I talked about trying to sense her needs rather than trying to guess what is wrong. In this case, just holding her worked.

I was her favorite person in the world when she was a baby. People had already started gathering at her first birthday party by the time I arrived. Once Elliana saw me, she put her arms out to let me know that it was time to hold her. If someone else wanted to hold her after that, she would let them for a minute or two before letting me know that she wanted to be with me again. As I said, there was a connection between us that I never felt with anyone else. 

Giving Up My Favorite Prejudice Ever

Sometimes the most difficult thing about accepting truth is that it comes at the expense of some of our favorite prejudices. A prejudice I once held was that anything that was broken could be fixed. Though I still believe that broken things can be fixed, the truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. I have written about my mom holding onto a broken coffee maker just in case someone in the family would rather fix a ten-year-old coffee machine than spend $20 for a new one. It became garbage on the day it quit working, and it was thrown away after mom held onto it for fifteen years.

The more we value something, the more broken it must be for us to get rid of it. The truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. The coffee maker isn't worth fixing if it quits working. The line for a car or a house goes far beyond the line for the coffee maker, and the line for a house we own goes beyond the line for the car. All of them offer the greatest value assets can have for a coffee drinking, daily commuting homeowner, which is utility value. However, the coffee maker is more easily replaced than the car, which, in turn, is more easily replaced than the house. 

Jezebel (2013-2022)

I have never had a pet who loved me as much as Jezebel loved me. We saw her at the Humane Society when we were there looking for Mr. Grumpy, who had disappeared a week earlier. She was about a year old and had a deformed bottom jaw. She was an unlikely candidate for adoption because of her jaw, but she was obviously sweet and affectionate. 

We brought her home the day before Mr. Grumpy showed up from his week-long hiatus. Along with Prancer, we then had three cats. They got along well with Prancer recognized as the elder and Jezebel acting as a benevolent guardian, a role fitted to her because of how large she was. Grumpy never challenged either of them, accepting his role as the clumsy little brother.

Charlie Cakes (2013-2022)

I didn't know Charlie for the first couple years of his life. He was found in Hawaii by my daughter who was stationed there. She found him along with three of his siblings after their feral mom had been hit by a car. She got three of the four to the point they could eat on their own. She gave away one of the survivors.

She originally planned on also giving Charlie away and keeping only Zeppelin. However, he endeared himself so much to her that she changed plans, and I ended up with my two oldest grandkittens.

Remembering Mom: Finding Her on the Floor

I don't remember the weather or the date, but I will never forget the feeling I had that morning in April of 2008 when I opened the door to Mom's house and heard her calling for help from the back hallway. When I rushed back there, Mom was on the floor where she had lain soiled since she got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and to go to the bathroom.

I wanted to call 911 on the spot, but she convinced me to call Maureen to help instead. She assured me that she had laid there for several hours, so another little bit wouldn't hurt more. She did not want the medics coming in to deal with her soiled and dirty. I called Maureen, told her we had an emergency, and went to help Mom a bit in the five minutes or so that it took Maureen to arrive. 

Remembering Mom: If Her Services Had Been About Her

Mom was entombed yesterday. Her service was a lovely sermon that she would likely have despised. It isn't that the minister wasn't eloquent. It was that he talked too much about religion and got too many things about her incorrect.

To be fair, the job of speaking at her service was offered to me before the minister was hired. I declined. I had the experience speaking at Dad's service. Besides not having practiced public speaking for almost two decades, Mom never asked me to do her service. Dad did. There were points during his service that, if I had broken down, I probably could not have recovered. I was practiced in those days. To that end, it is as much my fault as anyone else's that Mom's services turned into a sermon like at a church service.

Yvonne Koecke (1935-2020): Third Eerie Premonition About Death Came True

Mom told me that she didn't fear death; she feared the mode of death. When she explained the difference, it didn't have anything to do with her cause of death. It had to do with the third of her three eerie premonitions that came true. I'll get back to that.

Mom was born on May 31st, 1935, in Leith, North Dakota. Her parents, Roy "Clair" and Dorothy Kamrath packed everything up that July and moved to Oregon with their oldest child. 

She told us tales about growing up in the logging camps, and various homes and farms, as her father moved the family seeking regular work during the Great Depression. The family would grow with Clarence, Bill, and Eileen added to the pack. Pa, as we used to call him, found regular employment with Oregon State College in Corvallis, and the family settled into its permanent home.

The Engineer and His Apprentice

It was only a garage roof, but, after years of admiring Jack, the engineer in the family, I would finally have the opportunity to work beside and for him as an apprentice, albeit for one rather small job. Still, this was my chance to cast away the doubts I seem to have over everything and learn how to be certain about everything based on an engineering degree like Jack has from the local state college.

You Hold Him Down; I'll Tie It To Him

Dave and I go back many years. There were thousands of times of getting stoned, playing darts, and having a drink or two. However, there were two nights that were memorable because instead of being stoned on pot, we were taking hallucinogens.

Dean and Bob joined us on the mushroom adventure. We went to the new Stadium Bowl that got washed away. We got what we needed and got out of there so we wouldn't get caught with our haul. It was off to J Street where we added 'shrooms to some cheap frozen pizza and made some terrible tasting tea. We weren't after the taste, and soon we were tripping.

Are We Equal?

It would be both nice and convenient if the answer to the question of whether or not we are equal were a simple "yes." However, that will not stand up to scrutiny, even to the most liberal of minds. Ultimately, the answer is "no," we are not equal except that we each are only one person. Once we get beyond that similarity, the differences begin indiscriminately.

Sometimes, though, the differences are discriminatory. We would all like to think that we are either exempt from the possibility of discrimination, or that our discrimination is more justifiable than other discriminations, but it is still discrimination.

There is truth in measuring things in degrees or in amounts, and some discrimination is more justifiable than other discriminations. To wit: it is more justifiable to discriminate against people with disabilities if the disability means they cannot fulfill the needs for the job, like lifting or climbing requirements, than it is to discriminate against them because they don't fit the image of the company.

A Depressing Tale of Empathy

There was no particular significance to that Tuesday. I had no other plans for the day, so it fit into the schedule. I hadn't told anyone about my plans, but I didn't on those other occasions, either. It all worked out okay those times. I know that one of these times it won't, but I still think selecting how and when we die has its advantages.

That Tuesday I chose to take an overdose of sleeping pills washed down with some whiskey. This time felt different than all those other times, though. In fact, I could point to the differences. 

All those other visions of hanging myself, blowing my brains out, and jumping off bridges were just things that seem to go through my mind. I find it hard to believe that everyone hasn't at some point thought about suicide. If they do, and they rid themselves of the thought, then we do it the same way. A few people have claimed to never have thought about it, but even denying the thoughts requires some level of contemplation about it, or so it would seem. 

Like I said, I mostly just get rid of the thoughts. Often. Really often.

The Problem With Knowing It All

Aside from the obvious levity in the title, and the preposterous notion that any individual has the answers to all truth, the biggest problem with knowing it all is that then the conclusions must be accepted, and evidence must not contradict the conclusions. After all, if we accept evidence contrary to that which we know, then we cannot have known it all. That creates a shorted circuit in the brains of some people. Seriously. They cannot get past the point of looping confirmation bias once a preconceived notion, long held and somewhat sacred, is challenged for truth.

I suspect there will be people who think I am talking about them in particular, and there will be others who think I am talking about other people and not them. However, I am talking about everyone in general and no one in particular. We all are susceptible to thinking we have the answers even though we don't fully understand the questions. Besides, even if we don't have the answers, we can have opinions that we don't fully understand.

And the loop begins anew.

If You Are Tired of Politics, Lose Your Opinion, Too

Every four years we see the people poke their heads out to state again how tired they are of politics. Some of it is actually okay. There are people who simply are not into politics, who don't want to discuss politics, and who don't want to be dragged into political discussions. There is consistency when the person whose head pokes out to tell someone that they don't discuss politics when everyone is talking about politics.

However, there are those people who feel the need to follow the declaration by offering their opinions on politics. Then, they claim their opinions on politics are valid. 

What do they mean when they aren't interested in politics, but they think their opinions on political matters are valid? That is like saying they aren't interested in cooking, but they have opinions on how we can improve our recipes. How would they know if they don't know our recipes? They can't know. They can't support the reasons for the improvements if they don't know what already goes into it. 

The same goes with politics. If someone doesn't want to know what went into the political discussions, how can they possibly offer anything of value to improve it? They can't. They shouldn't. If it's you who does it, don't.