Twinkle Lights...

I don't know if it's just getting past Black Friday or what, but after all was said and done this weekend, I was actually in the mood to put up Christmas stuff!! I decided to do a real tree this year, but we weren't actually sure what the ruling was in the apartment building we live in, so we got a potted Norfolk pine! I love him!! Mom, he's just like Maurice, so we call him MJ, Maurice Junior. And I love the whole snowflake thing, so I put up my snowflake lights. Hope you all are getting to enjoy the holiday pre-season :) We're even getting pretty cold here all of a sudden, -14 with the wind chill today, ew. Here's what our living room looks like, and I'm not quite done, but I kinda like the simplicity of just the lights and greens. Maybe I will be done... We'll see. And you all, come see!

Heather Feather...

I am thinking about my older sister nearest in age to me today. As I sit and drink coffee and eat my Ezekiel bread, I think about her... Let me introduce you to her, if you don't know her already.

Heather Feather, Mary Marie McGrail. Okay, so her given name is Heather Mary McGrail, the others are a few nicknames she's received along the way. Heather is 4 years older than me. She has her masters in English, with quite a concentration in linguistics, literature, and an unnatural eye and ear for grammar. She thinks about a PhD, but isn't there yet. She has lived in Iowa, NY, Missouri, NJ, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Oregon for a summer, and now South Korea. She has written two novels, but hasn't let anyone read either, grrrrrranimals. She did let me, many years ago, read one of her short stories, and I will always remember it; it was memorable for a couple of reasons: I'm not going to lie, it was a bit morbid, but even more so, it read like something I would read in my AP English class in high school. She has a way with words, not in a snobby way, though sometimes I do feel the pressure to use really big words around her, and occasionally I need a dictionary to translate her sentences, but in that way that if someone were to narrate your life, she could do it better than you.

She notices things around her in a way that I do not. She sees things in people that I do not see. I think it's the artist in her; yeah, did I mention she also an artist? She can draw and paint, she's done ridiculously amazing things with beads. If any of you are ever in our apartment, she did the pencil drawing of the curly-haired guy in our office.

And now she is in South Korea. She had tossed around the idea of teaching overseas for a little while, and then one day, just decided to do it. After some snags along the way, South Korea it was. She's been there since the middle of August, and I think of her whenever I call "home" on my cell phone because "Heather" comes right before "home."

Heather is a bit of a home body; she's a caregiver and a taker-carer. Because of this, I think she's missing home a bit more than usual right now. This is one of my favorite qualities of my sister: she knows how to completely care for you. The best way to explain this to you is with a little anecdote:

When I was working with the church up in Duluth, and I feel like I've told this story before, but stick with me. I had the brilliant idea to borrow my parent's RV and take a bunch of the high school juniors and seniors on a college-hunting trip. But we wouldn't waste our time on any colleges that were close enough for them to visit with their parents, no we would go to Chicago, a couple of places in Michigan, and one in Indiana. We hit five colleges in three states in about 48 hours before we headed to my parents' in Indianapolis for a night's rest before trucking back to Duluth, a mere 11 hours away. Oh yeah, and I was the only "adult" and driver with about half a dozen students. By the time we hit Mom and Dad's, I was pooped, to say the least. Mom and Dad were gone, somewhere, but Heather met us there, in the driveway, had snacks and soda out for the gang, had places for everyone to sleep, had a cozy fire going in the fireplace, and just took over. At heart, I really am an introvert, and I was drained; Heather seemed to just know that. She told the gang where to go to find anything and everything, had beds set up, got me some hot cider to drink, and tucked me into bed. She made us breakfast the next morning, gave me lots of loving and encouragement, and sent us home, refreshed and ready for the drive.

This is just how Heather is: humbly just caring. Heather, wish you were here drinking coffee with me, or I was there eating sushi with you, but know that you are well loved and missed, and we'll be seeing you, and I'll bet the time between now and then will fly.

Linus has a lump...

For those of you who don't know, Mike and I have two Siamese cats. We started with Linus, who someone had left behind at the apartment complexes that Kate had been working at the summer Mike and I got married. Mike hadn't enjoyed cats up to that point, in fact enjoy is a little soft, he didn't really like cats at all. And Linus won him over. Linus lets Mike pile driver him and body slam him, Linus lets him hold him on his back in the shape of a bean. Linus hides in our suitcase when we try to pack to go on trips. He grunts a little when he has to jump too high or pretty much whenever he jumps down from anything. He really enjoys marshmallows. And he really likes to be vacuumed.

When we lived in our house in Duluth, he'd have these random spurts of energy where he'd start in the basement, come bounding up the steep basement steps, slip and slide like a cartoon character across the wood floor thru the kitchen, into the living room, where he'd then lead the first five steps, grapple up the rest of the steps, race around upstairs before he'd finally be satiated. This is especially funny when you've realized the normal pace of anything for Linus is less than slow.

One afternoon, again when we were in our house in Duluth, we had left for a quick trip to the grocery store, or something, had come back within an hour, and as we pulled up the driveway, there was Linus hanging, head first, out of the kitchen window. We hadn't remembered that we had left that window, the only screen-less one in the house, open. Our other cat, Sally had escaped first and went to hide under a bush, and Linus had thought this was a good idea, but changed his mind just a little too late. There he hung, his entire body out the window, with just his two back feet clinging to the window sill, until we came and grabbed him.

So a few weeks ago, we noticed Linus had a bit of a lump on the right side of his head, about the size of a grape. We were a little nervous, but not too worried, and because Linus becomes Dr. Jekyll when we take him to the vet, we decided to wait a little bit and see what happened. It, of course grew quite large fairly fast. Mike took Linus in to just have the vet look at him. Linus wouldn't even let the nice man close enough to have a good look. The vet offered to put him under, give him a proper exam, and then biopsy the now ping-pong-sized mass on the side of his head, just under his ear.

We accepted this offer, made Linus fast for 12 hours, he was a very unhappy kitty, to say the least, and took him in again. As I walked into the office with the growling and spitting cat carrier, the receptionist recognized our little angel by sound alone. I received the all-okay call a couple of hours later, went back to pick him up, was informed that he was a little crabby and would be groggy for a while, but he came thru pretty well. The unfortunate news was that the vet had not seen anything like this before and would like to send some of the collected cells away; we'd know a bit more in a week.

And if any of you have ever seen a cat waking up from anesthesia, it's quite possibly the most sad and pathetic thing I've ever encountered. You can tell that he doesn't know what's going on, why his legs aren't working properly, why he can't avoid running into anything within four feet of the direction he would like to go. And he would just lay there with his eyes wide open, head down to the side, and just lay. I had to check a few times to make sure he was still breathing.

Anyways, this long tirade ends with this: Linus has a lump. It's origin is unknown, it's mostly squamous cells, they cannot tell if it will invade the bone in his head and jaw, but it is unlikely to metastasize. The vet assumes it has come from a salivary gland, and when I asked him what he would do if Linus were his cat, he sighed, said he hated when people asked this, and said we wouldn't operate on it. Linus is old in cat years, not elderly, but old. He may not recover, the vet might not be able to get all of it, and right now he has pretty good life satisfaction.

But now I feel a little like we are in kitty hospice, looking for signs that he might not be doing well. Is he going off by himself because he knows it's time, or just because he wants to look out the window. (The vet said that we all will probably reach the point when we will just sit and look out the window, that this isn't necessarily a bad thing...) Is he still eating, is he sleeping more than his typical 18 hours a day, does he chew his food or just swallow it, and is that because in typical Linus manner he generally wolfs his food, or is it because he has a tumor that has grown into his jaw and he can no longer use his jaw to chew?

For now, Linus sits on my lap, still loving to sit in the most irritating positions (between you and the keyboard, on top of what ever book you are reading, on top of whatever project you are working on, especially bad when beading, etc.) so that you are ensured to pet him, and we type this little story, he and I, about the life still to be lived, just one with a few more golf ball-sized lumps along the way.

The holidays approacheth...

Good grief, what happened to the fall. And the beginning of November for that matter. About a week and a half until Thanksgiving, and only about a month and a half 'til Christmas. With Mike and I working not holiday-friendly jobs (retail and hospital), spending time with family is looking a little different this year. Not to mention that our siblings are all over the country and the world. Literally, Hawaii, Oregon, Virginia, one here in MN, and South Korea. I wonder, if we hopped our own private jet, flew directly to each of these places, spent at least an hour at each place, how long would that take us?

Thanksgiving we are scheduled to be with Mike's parents, which is nice in that they are in town, or at least within an hour of us. Mike and I both work, hospitals I guess really do need to be open all the time, jeez, in case of, I don't know, a life or death kind of situation ;) And retail, and the whole black Friday thing, just isn't pretty. So it sounds like we might be having a slightly less traditional Thanksgiving meal on Friday or Saturday, but again, it's nice that they are so close so we can do a good few bits several times over the weekend. And Christmas this year is with my parents, again, kinda tricky, especially for me. Mike doesn't have to work, but man, those last minute shoppers are killers. We're actually heading to them on Christmas and to stay for a few days, then be back in time for Mike and I both to work New Year's. Kinda cool again, though; because they are so close, we'll probably be able to do some of Mike's family's Christmas too.

I'm sure some day, whenever we start to have kids of our own, the holidays will start to look pretty different. We may even have to start hosting our own holiday celebrations. In the meantime, it is still really great to continue on in our families' traditions, even when they do start to evolve as we do into adults.

I'm going to try and remember these happy thoughts as the holidays get closer, and the shoppers get crabbier. For those of you who have never worked in retail around the holidays, and even for those of us who have and do, please remember that the people trying desperately to help you find that perfect gift are overworked, underpaid, and generally harassed more in these two months than most of us are in a year. And give them a small break...

One last time for the season...

I love fall, have I told you that? And I guess I'm still stuck on the whole apple picking thing 'cuz we went again. Or at least I went again with Mike and two Gap-ies, Natalie and Brit. I mean look at these beauties, and I don't just mean me and the girls ;) Yummy!! We're late in the season, so we were only able to pick Regents and Haralsons, but still de-lish! I'm still shocked at how many people haven't ever been apple picking before, I mean seriously, this is one of the ultimate fall-time activities! And if you have kids, it's a must! Here are some cute picks...