Writer friends: you might want to join us in person or on zoom for this
By Joan Zachary, official Parisian Phoenix photographer This 21st century world is a visual one. We have social media to thank for this. Are you …
From Joan Zachary: Details on next week’s free presentation of photography and book design
Happenings at Parisian Phoenix, which include my latest book.
Parisian Phoenix has passed its nine month anniversary this month. This business is like a new relationship: every month matters. Next week, …
Next week’s events: an origin story and a GLVWG workshop
It’s over.
I walked into the house after the gym today and I was met with empty rooms, deflating balloons, empty pizza boxes and cake crumbs.
The teenager is with a client. The guests have gone, even the one that drove a distance and stayed overnight.
Throughout the teenager’s life, she frequently lamented that she was the youngest in the class snd never had a birthday during the school year. That inconvenient June birthday.
But yesterday she was able to gather people who celebrated her and had seen her grow and wanted to marvel in who she was as a person, as a young adult, for a graduation/birthday party.
She wanted pizza From Nicolosi’s in Forks Township and pretzel nuggets and dip from the Pretzel Company. (And I think out friends will be patronizing Nicolosi’s now— several of their flights with the pieces cut in half is a great way to spoil guests.)
She wanted to bake her own cakes and decorate them, which she did.
She wanted to play Cards Against Humanity. And we did.
The party started with a raucous discussion of the Hess’s Department Store and ended with promises of homemade pie.
And the dog only ate a small chunk of the red velvet cake.
The teenager is now a high school graduate and soon she will no longer be a teenager. She will be the young adult or the offspring or some other nickname, but she will always be my pride and joy.
So much of parenting is learning, slowly, to step aside and let your child grow into her/his own person. To be mindful and humble and supportive without smothering. To be proud, but subtle. To encourage and guide, but not nag.
And to trust.
To trust your parenting. Your child. And that young person’s decisions.
And seeing that child grown— the love that pours out of you… eventually you might feel like a deflated balloon and then that child does something that makes you float once again.
I will always be my daughter’s mother, but the bulk of the intense, hands-on work is done.
And so today, Curly led us in making an infused oil of basil, lavender and sea salt to bless ourselves and my home with positivity.
It’s all part of the cycle— especially for women— maiden, mother, crone. I guess I might have to transition to the crone phase now.
Judaism seems to be a recurring theme in my life these days.
At Parisian Phoenix, we believe in supporting other authors, other publishers and other artists. To that extent, publisher Angel Ackerman …
Reviewing Shannon Gonyou’s Since Sinai
No fancy title. No big announcements . Just some subtle realness.
Though I do have a little good news. Misty came home today. He’s wobbly, but he’s his sweet-natured self. Video here.
Touch of Grey is still in the hospital.
If you missed that harrowing tale, you can read it here.
The world often seems twisted in an eternal loop of one step forward, two steps back. It makes me miss my dad.
But I noticed today amid the cat drama and everyday life— I worked with my blind friend Nan this morning— that I still have trouble with my right leg, mostly stiffness and lack of control, but no pain.
So when I headed to Apex Training for my session with Andrew, I felt anxious and emotionally exhausted but physically ready to go.
Every session Andrew challenges me more today— and I did a mixed grip barbell deadlift at 100 lbs. And for the first time, I felt like I nailed the form.
As if that weren’t enough, he had me do something I never heard of: a plank up. He wanted me to do 5, but I only did 4 1/2. Well, Greg was willing to give me credit for 4 3/4. And as the teenager says, Greg doesn’t hand out credit easily. Speaking of improvements, in Saturday’s session, I surpassed 60 seconds in a plank.
My strength, at least the physical kind, is coming back.
Dinner was a flat bread pizza — a vegetarian delight of random cheese I found in the fridge, a radish sliced thinly, and some honey with red pepper flakes.
This is a cautionary tale for those of us who keep dogs and cats in the same household. And what happens when pet caregivers make a terrible mistake.
I don’t want to write it, because it makes me feel like a terrible, negligent person. But I will write it, because sometimes those experiences are the ones that impact someone else.
I know my cat bite experience and my resulting hospital stay is one of the most read pieces on this blog, right behind Girl Scout Camp Moseywood and my trip to Siberia for Pizza.
But enough of that… I didn’t get much sleep last night and I called out of work today… let me explain why.
Monday night when I got home from work, I was exhausted. For the second day in a row, I had surpassed expectations at work and was achy and just wiped out from getting up at 4 a.m. and grouchy.
The teenager gave me flea meds for the two foster cats that like me best and asked me to apply it. I tossed it with a little a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups into my clean laundry basket. I carried the basket to my room and started my nightly routine of feeding the birds, checking water bowls, cleaning cat boxes and organizing my clothes for the day to come.
Meanwhile, the teenager applied flea meds to Opie, our personal tripod cat who has survived bone cancer; Misty, another personal who is her baby— the runt of a litter born under a neighbor’s porch and the critter responsible for getting us involved with Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab; and Touch of Grey, an adult foster cat who used to be extremely aggressive who is finally learning to be loved and appropriately social.
I grabbed the little silver packages from the basket and was about to set them aside (I’ll do it tomorrow, I told myself, I’m exhausted right now) when I noticed the words on the package— K9 Advantix Extra Large Dog Do Not Use on Cats.
For those of you who normally read this blog, you know we have a 60 pound puppy, a mastiff/pit bull/black lab mix named Bean. These were her flea meds. Flea meds are extra important when you have dogs with indoor cats because the dog can transport fleas and other parasites into the house. So even if the cats never go outside they can get fleas and worms from the dog. So the teenager is religious about giving the dog her flea meds.
The cats get flea meds about every three months, or once a season, just in case. But, like the dog, you can apply monthly.
So immediately text the teenager— yes, from within my own house— because it’s the quickest way to get a teenager’s attention.
“You gave me dog flea meds. Please check what you gave the others.”
She kicked into action and gave all three of the cats baths with Dawn dish soap. (Which we later learned was the right thing to do.)
So the next step was to wait for signs of neurological distress. And for 24 hours nothing happened. We thought everything was good.
The teenager is hosting a party on Friday and some of her guests are allergic to cats. She has an elaborate plan for cleaning and limiting cats to certain rooms. But we didn’t know what to do with Touch of Grey, because if she gets upset or can’t do what she wants she redirects and can be a bully.
Basically, no one wants to be trapped in a room with her. I suggested putting her in my room with the tripods, Opie and Louise, because Louise will hide and Opie is a boss with a good stare down. Touch of Grey had sneaked into my room when the teenager came to visit, so we decided to make her spend the night. And she decided to sprawl out in the middle of my bed.
I go to bed ridiculously early as I rise at 4 a.m. for my 6:30 a.m. 10-hour shift folding clothes at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse. I turned out my light at 8:30 p.m. and muttered sweet nothings to the cockatoo before falling asleep probably around 9 p.m. (26 hours after the application, for reference)
At literally midnight, I wake up to the cockatoo rustling and this horrible knocking sound, repetitive and frantic. I turned on my light. I am extremely near-sighted (like on a good day I might be able to see my toes versus my feet). I saw a cat thrashing against the wall, feet flailing on its back. I knew it was white.
That meant Touch of Grey or Louise. I put my glasses on and started counting legs. The two cats are extremely similar, except Louise is more white in the face and only has three legs. This cat had four. Touch of Grey! Flea meds!
I leapt out of bed and stopped to her side. The thrashing stopped but she was twitching and panting. I ran my hand across her and her heart was racing. I could feel it. I ran down the hall and woke the teenager.
She called our cat foster godmother, also president of the rescue, and brought her binder of pet first aid. The seizure had settled to twitching at this point, and Touch of Grey kept trying to leave the room. Lethargically.
Godmother told us to call poison control and Harmony Animal Hospital, one of the local emergency vets. Poison control directed us to animal poison control. We were given two numbers (which I wrote on the teenager’s arm with a giant green Sharpie)— one (the ASPCA) kept us on hold for about five minutes and the other kept trying to sell us car insurance.
Opie is looking at us as if to say, “What’s going on?”
We can’t find Misty anywhere.
We took Touch of Grey to the vet, and the vet explained that dog flea meds are extremely toxic to cats. I knew it was toxic, but had I know they were this toxic I would have brought them all in right away and not waited for symptoms (which can take three days to manifest).
We get home from the vet at 1:45 a.m. and the teenager finds her baby, her Misty, seizing in a cat box. I drive her to the vet and Misty is admitted. He’s running a fever of almost 105 degrees and showing more intense neurological symptoms.
Each cat could cost us $900 in vet medical bills.
We got home at 2:30 a.m.
No news this morning about how they are doing, but the vet is administering IV fluids and muscle relaxers. Opie seems okay.
Word of advice: store cat products and dog products in very different locations.
So first things first— let’s embarrass the teenager.
She graduated from high school Friday night. (Above, pictured, left to right: me, her father, her, her paternal grandfather and grandmother and my stepmom)
The weekend that followed included several dinners with family members and we have a party planned later this week.
The other updates:
I just took my first fall in two-and-a-half weeks, after the jubilation of finally finding my specialist yesterday.
Maybe I didn’t sleep last night. Maybe I did too much at the gym. Maybe I was stressed after reading the report of the insurance adjuster that my home has more than $10,000 in damage from what I call, “the toilet explosion.”
I tripped. I think I might have misjudged the length of my steps when I tried to step over the industrial fan in my bathroom. I went in to wash the drain cleaner down the drain that I had prepped after my shower.
I fell into the cute submarine toiletry holder I let the teenager when she was a little girl. The smashing plastic sent me over the edge of the tub and I hit my head and my left elbow on the ceramic tile wall on the far side of the tub.
I was trying to protect my left ring finger, the one in the cast. I’m less than three weeks away from getting this cast off. I hope for good. Nine weeks with my finger in plaster.
My head hurts. My elbow hurts. But I think I’m okay.
If you look at the photo, I was crossing over the air mover in the foreground and my ass ended up in the box with all the soap and shampoo.
Since temperatures here have been in the 90s, the impact of that equipment in my small bathroom has made it very dry and very hot, probably 110 degrees. The towel rods melted.
I called it my dry sauna. I would sit there and wrap my cast before you bathed and took a cold shower in the hot room. I loved it.
And downstairs— the fans and dehumidifiers are on 24-hours-a-day. You know when you are in a tunnel? The roar of the exhaust fans? That’s my living space.
But today we got the news— the water did $10,000 in damage. It looks like the floor, subfloor and wall in the bathroom need to be ripped out. And we need some plumbing.
There’s a wall downstairs that will need work, and there will be painting. And a new ceiling.
And my hardwood floors will need repair and the entire floor downstairs will need to be refinished.
I think the insurance company is going a little overboard. But we’ll see what ServePro rips out when they start demolition next week.
But maybe… just maybe… we can move some of these fans tomorrow. No more falls.
**this post may contain strong language… no, this post will contain strong language. I plan to drop an “f-bomb” in the first paragraph. But I promise it will be lighthearted and humorous not vulgar and full of rage.
Sometimes I wonder if the process of losing your mother-fucking mind which seems to descend upon a person once your children enter their teens isn’t the cause of dementia. Will the brain fog that accompanies keeping life together as the offspring prepare to leave the nest clear as they depart? Or is it permanent?
I think when you reach the latter half of the forty-somethings, the time you might have spent on hobbies, movies or parties in your youth is replaced by the tedium of home ownership, career, family, parents and medical care (your own, your family, probably even friends). And maybe you just don’t have the patience you used to.
I am currently waiting for the remediation team. If you skip back to Tuesday’s blog, you’ll recall that my 50- or 60-year-old toilet exploded and damaged my dining room ceiling. The plumber came Tuesday and installed a new toilet, and the teenager gave me shit. Not only does she not like the new toilet (as the plumber warned me) but she also had beef with the plumber for taking her old toilet.
I asked the teenager, “what on earth would you do with an old broken toilet?”
And, of course, the teenager told me. She wanted to take the ancient pink ceramic toilet and use it as a planter in our front yard next to our pink rose bush.
“It would look so cool,” she said.
And it probably would. But I did not go to college and embark on all the adventures I have to place a broken toilet in my front yard.
The scheduler for the insurance adjuster called Wednesday morning, about 29 hours after the incident, and scheduled the adjuster for Wednesday June 1. I asked the teenager if she could handle letting him into the house. She agreed. The scheduler called again and moved it to Tuesday. Teenager agreed again. Scheduler called a third time to ask if we had had a remediation company come to check if we had any or were in danger of collecting any mold. I said no. She said to call one.
So Wednesday on my lunch break (my first day back after a month of medical leave), I emailed ServePro because I didn’t have the time or the quiet to talk on the phone. They called, and after about three difficult phone calls with them, (the person on the other end couldn’t hear me well. I was wearing a mask, using one AirPod and working in a noisy warehouse.) they said they would confirm an appointment for Thursday or Friday by the end of the day.
[note: this is a pause in the blog post as the remediation team arrived.]
The remediation scheduler called about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, which was about 60 hours after I turned the water off to the toilet and started mopping up the damage. My appointment was for 1 p.m. Friday, about 80 hours after the original accident.
But at least I made myself a nice dinner of fig & ricotta ravioli from Lidl with Alfredo sauce from Hungryroot and vegetables (baby broccoli, red pepper, and peas) cooked in the Cuisinart air fryer toaster oven.
Last night, when the teenager got home from her dad’s, I think I was emptying the dishwasher and I went on a psychotic rant about silverware. You see, when her father and I got married, we registered for Oneida’s Easton flatware in the satin finish. I have always loved that silverware. It was $100 a place setting, and that was in 1999. That’s $20 per utensil. But it’s beautiful, and my husband and I both agreed on it without compromise, and it’s heavy, and we lived in an apartment in downtown Easton, Pennsylvania.
And sometime between when teenager two lived with us and now, many pieces of that silverware have disappeared. And it’s melodramatic, but the loss is like a gaping wound. No other silverware feels right in my hand. So I snapped, for the umpteenth time, and shouted at the teenager about my missing silverware.
In that moment, I realized that for some reason, that silverware really means something to me. Eating with it brings me joy. And that silverware looks as new as the day we bought it. Our marriage lasted 20 years, and the silverware may last generations.
“I don’t have the money to replace it,” I screamed.
And then I realized…
I launched a publishing company. I buy myself iced coffee about once a week. I spend almost as much on animal food as I do on people food. So, why can’t I figure out how to pay for new silverware? Especially since I know Replacements.com has just about every silverware and china pattern ever made (used) at a discount. I think I found my dream pattern. I ordered a few pieces of my silverware, based on cost and what I actually need.
This morning started with a cup of coffee, some cuddly cats, a trip to the chiropractor and a whole lot of cleaning before the remediation team arrived. I made the teenager and I a breakfast of fresh baguette from Lidl, toasted in the Cuisinart oven, buttered, covered a slice of proscuitto and toasted more, and then drizzled with hot honey and sprinkled with herbs de provence. It was as amazing as it sounds.
The teenager had her last high school final exam, the only one she had to take this year, and returned home to find me aflutter with the broom and a mop. I asked her to do something for me. It might have been to move a multipack of paper towels to another room, when she stopped and opened the sunporch window.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
And I thought to myself, she’s not smelling the roses.
And she replied, “I’m smelling the roses.”
“Seriously?” I said. “I ask you to do something and instead you literally stop to smell the roses!”
She then picked a bouquet for the main room downstairs. Eventually, she moved the paper towels.
Once the house was cleaned and the teenager shuffled off to work, I finished Natasha Sizlo’s memoir, All Signs Point to Paris. I received a copy via NetGalley and reviewed it on Goodreads and mentioned it in my Parisian Phoenix blog post that will go live tomorrow. I tried to start P.N. Dedeaux’s Algiers Tomorrow but it offended me beyond rebuke within the first two chapters.
I understand that the book was published in 1993. I also understand that erotica by its nature breaks rules and can feature taboos. But in the first two chapters, we join two bratty rich sixteen year olds nicknamed “Boobs” and “Butt” through a vacation in France. By the end of the chapters, I want them to get murdered. I was hoping for some cheesy references to Algerians with which I could have some Mystery Science Theater 3000-type fun.
I ordered a chicken pizza with vodka sauce from Nicolosi’s Pizza in Forks Township. It was a custom pizza and I told them to “put whatever on it to make it pizza-y.” They added fresh basil. It smelled amazing. The teenager was picking it up at 2:45 p.m after work.
And don’t you know it, the remediation team was late… They called at 2:55 p.m. and arrived at 3:05 p.m. I had one bite of my scrumptious, piping hot custom pizza. And it was time to find out if my house was wet.
Unfortunately, it is.
We could lose our bathroom subfloor. Our hardwood floors and walls are damp. We have five industrial air movers in the living area and a massive dehumidifier. And upstairs we have three more air movers in the bathroom and another dehumidifier.
But we’re safe, and sometimes you just have to have faith it will work out.
At the end of the day, Bean Dog got new toys.
First off: 89%
For those of you who know me or follow me regularly, I performed at 89% today after a month of short-term disability leave.
Short answer to how my day was: good. I felt pretty good and my aches and pains at the end of the day feel pretty normal.
Now, for those who want more detail, let’s start at the beginning.
On April 15, I ruptured a tendon in my left ring finger taking my socks off. The nickname for the injury is “mallet finger” because your finger looks like a mallet or “baseball finger” because if you catch a baseball wrong you can sustain this injury.
You can read a more concise summary of those events and my treatment here.
I worked with my hand like that for a week at the Bizzy Hizzy folding clothes for Stitch Fix’s clients, performing at a solid 90%. But… I realized I rely on my left side for balance and stability and using my right side to do everything exacerbated problems I was already having with my right hip and spine as complications of my lifelong battle with cerebral palsy. That has been another journey of mine— learning about my body and how I can work with it to age well.
I often wonder what I could accomplish if my body could do what other bodies do.
So I asked my family doctor if I could take a short-term disability leave from work and focus on building core strength and stretching my hips. Because with this silly finger cast, on top of all my other issues, I was falling twice a week.
Today I returned to work— one ten-hour shift in my home department (QC) before the holiday weekend. I work Sunday. We have a paid holiday Monday. And I have a doctor appointment Tuesday afternoon with the neurological physiatrist.
Returning to work today gave me a way to ease back into it, and allows me to gather data on how my body performs. I can give that info to the physiatrist. If I hurt again by Tuesday, it’s a sign that either:
I arrived at work for my 6:30 a.m. shift and friends greeted me that I haven’t seen. At first I went to the wrong table, but caught my mistake, and corrected myself.
I had a right table, good for my hand injury, and one at a good height.
But then they shut the line down and I moved to a left table that was a tad high for me.
For the first 60-90 minutes, I hit all my numbers.
Eventually, I got a text from Mr. Accordion. I hope he doesn’t mind but I’m sharing his photos because:
I don’t think he knew it was my first day back to work but his periodic cooking updates made me smile. Mr. Accordion and I shared an office at my last non-profit job. And yes, he not only plays accordion but usually has it in his car.
A couple times today, I had to answer phone calls regarding the toilet explosion that happened in my house yesterday. The insurance adjuster will be here Tuesday and meet with the teenager. I am working on getting water remediation people in to make sure everything is dry.
At the end of the day, I have a weird uncomfortable feeling in my left wrist and the kind of typical aches and pains that come from being older than 40 and working in a warehouse ten hours a day.
I attribute some of my success today to my personal trainer Andrew at Apex. We did an exercise yesterday that was something he called a variation of a good morning. This had me holding a weight across the back of my shoulders and “hinging” at the waist while using my hips for most of the motion.
I tried to replicate those techniques when I bent down to get items out of the bottom of my carts.
Then, when I came home, the teenager had dinner in the oven. I received a lovely message from a former editor at The Morning Call’s short-lived weekly editions, Chronicle Newspapers.
He said I was a truly good person (for all my work fostering cats) and that he missed seeing me every day.
I thanked him and said he made my day.
He replied that there were many times when I had made his and my boss’s day.
That was my favorite job ever, and one I was very good at.
Also, I tried the blueberry muffin flavor of ready-to-drink Supercoffee. My initial reaction was that it was gross. Will give a more thorough review later.
