At work today, by my math, I did 102% in my home department folding clothes— 159 fixes to be exact during a ten-hour shift that started with a 20+ minute meeting. Yesterday I shipped 565 packages in Freestyle, which is 113%.
Those were some of my fixes.
Sunday we were off, a paid holiday to recognize Juneteenth. The teenager and I used the time to visit the senior community where my mom lives as one of her neighbors wanted some of my books.
Grandma S bought all three of my current novels and a copy of the Parisian Phoenix anthology, Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money, as it contains essays by me, the teenager and her father.
Grandma S, the teenager and I had a lovely visit where I finally got to meet her mammoth cat.
And we all know I love a cat.
We stopped to see my mom and her partner on our way out — thought it would be a good surprise for Father’s Day as the teenager has good memories of my mother and her roommate that involve Yoo-Hoo and tractors and cornfields.
My mom asked for several books as well.
And then some discussions happened that made me think maybe the senior community might be the closest thing I have to a “street team” to publicize my books.
Grandma S said she saw my clumsy video of me reading from Manipulations on Facebook and wants to read more.
Mom apparently enjoyed deciphering the locales and familiar faces in the novel. One of her friends reported that the first novel jumped around too much and was hard to follow. She’s apparently reading the second now.
I requested to join him on the podcast, thinking it would be a great way to promote my business and share my experiences. I wanted Andrew to know how much his honesty means to me and how much I leaned on his support– even though he didn’t know me– in my journey to accept my identity as a person with a disability, in this case spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.
I had to reschedule once due to a doctor’s appointment with my current hand injury, and he had to reschedule once due to his IBS flares. He even started a podcast to talk about various GI issues and he called it, “This Shit is Real.” And I admire him for that openness. A recent and very occasional complication with my CP has been incontinence. Sometimes I can’t feel when I have to pee until it’s the very last second. And that is scary.
We finally had our chat today, and we barely scratched the surface of what both of us could say, and I know by the end I was talking too fast. Nala even behaved, but then my parakeet Yo-yo starting singing.
I hope he can salvage the audio.
I was so excited to have that chat with him as I have listened to the podcast for more than a year now. And he asked if he could contact me again so we can talk about book publishing.
Andrew can contact me anytime! The world needs more people that force discussions that we all need to have. We need to release ourselves from sensations of shame, anxiety and insecurity and accept each other and the perspectives we bring to the table.
I had a notebook because I wanted to write down the brilliant insights I knew we would have together and we had a great, great talk. But I babbled. And now I don’t have much to share with you.
So I guess we’ll have to wait for Andrew to release the episode.
I don’t need to get up this early. But, I’ve been on 10-hour day shifts in the warehouse now for 6 months and I feel like it’s the best way to maintain some work-life balance and some productivity.
And honestly, by 8 or 9 p.m. I’m usually so exhausted, mentally and physically, that I am mindlessly eating and/or watching TV.
So I rise in the early morning. It’s too early. I have to tip-toe out of my room as to not wake the cockatoo. The cats are confused. But… This is my creative writing time, my Parisian Phoenix business time, my coffee time, and my cuddle cats time.
Our “gen pop” of cats include brothers Misty and Fog, and fosters through Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab Touch of Grey and Minerva, with an occasional visit from our almost 12-year-old cancer surviving old man tripod Opie. Opie is like an old mob boss, but he’s tired now, and Fog, with his 2.5 years, has been challenging him for about the last year. Not in a really aggressive way, but challenging his authority enough that there have been some issues.
This morning, my productivity is not as, well, productive as I prefer. Sure, I tried to tame my curls. I started the dishwasher, took my allergy meds, made a big cup of coffee and checked for book sales. (None last night. The new title debuts next week– and it’s only $6.99. It’s also a novelette and written a little lighter than my usual dark style.)
But Minerva keeps coming to cuddle, Misty and Fog are playing, and Touch of Grey (Tiggy, as we sometimes call her) is patrolling. Oz is considering waking up in his crate, but he’s giving me side-eye. He will only wake if I plan to feed breakfast.
And if you have cats, you understand why I will not feed them breakfast at 4:30 a.m.
We corralled these “gen pop” cats into the spare bedroom last week for the teenager’s party, as we had some guests allergic to cats. The teenager thought it best to lock them up, then clean, as it would reduce the likelihood anyone would die.
We also passed out Benadryl at the door.
But that was the same stretch of time where two of the three cats accidentally given the dog’s flea meds ended up seizing. Misty and Touch of Grey ended up at the emergency vet, and $2300 later, they are both home. Neither is exhibiting any further neurological symptoms or personality damage.
They are both on muscle relaxers. So the teenager maintained quarantine to facilitate delivering their pills. But last night, she released them.
And I’m happy to watch Fog and Misty play, cuddle Minerva and encourage Tiggy to patrol.
The teenager said she liked the peace and quiet of having them locked up, but she has a dog to keep her company. I miss their cat obtrusion into my daily routine. Especially in the dog-free hours of pre-dawn.
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.
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.
But enough of that… I didn’t get much sleep last night and I called out of work today… let me explain why.
The Mix-Up
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.
F. Bean Barker
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 Seizure(s)
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 have been killing it in the gym. My plank time is more than a minute now. My strength is improving and for the first time ever, I did exercises with a 30-lb dumbbell.
It’s been seven weeks since I got my first cast to treat my mallet finger. Two more weeks until it comes off. Remember that when I mention that I am hitting milestones like the one mentioned above.
I hit the goal for Freestyle on Sunday at work in the Bizzy Hizzy. I shipped 500 items in, if I remember correctly, 363 packages. What makes that amazing is that we also had a one-hour training — so 500 items is the goal for a full day. Taking the training into account, that puts me at 110% for that day.
Yesterday and today I worked at the same left side table in QC. Even with pushing boxes to the left with a bum finger, I did 166 fixes yesterday (102%) and 169 today. (104%).
But here’s the weird part— i was in pain but it didn’t impact my movement. I started each day extremely stiff and with a little bit of back pain, but not in the low or upper back, in between. And as I eased into my shift, my hip hurt deep in the socket, up near my groin, but in the front in a very small but specific spot. And my quad would feel intense pain that sometimes went into my knee but for the most part didn’t. Tylenol doesn’t help. It gradually subsided over two hours. It happened in exactly the same way today.
I combat this my paying extra close attention to all my movements. I plant my feet on the floor and hold my core and glutes tight. I force out my toes and my knees and as I move my body to retrieve clothes below my waist I bend with my hips and stretch them. Is this what helps? Is something out of whack (like my femur) and stiff by morning and I force it back into position?
In very sad news, Charles Ticho, the nonagenarian author who penned the Parisian Phoenix book Stops Along the Way died today. I will be addressing this soon on the Parisian Phoenix blog.
Angel Ackerman 