I have had so much fun and have so much anticipation for Sunday’s Pop Up Kitten Cafe to benefit Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab.
It’s 2 a.m.
I need to be at the gym at 10 a.m.
But I just finished a salad from Wawa with spinach, chicken salad, carrots, apples and feta. Trying to combat stress with nourishing food.
After all, yesterday was Friday the 13th.
I sent N.J. EZ Pass a copy of my check from my daughter’s violations from her vacation. Apparently they need the front and back and I only sent the front.
I took my phone to Best Buy for repairs as Square Trade told me too. The screen repair would be $379, and my deductible is $129. But my phone is an old iPhone X (purchased in April 2018) and the battery is only at 84% and the face sensor is dead. So Best Buy does not recommend repairing it. They sell replacement iPhone X for I believe it was $549. But they didn’t have any.
So I had to go home, call SquareTrade and have them ship me a replacement. They are sending an Xs. Via FedEx. That is supposed to come today while I am running for the cafe. I hope I’m back in time.
[Edit: 2 p.m. No phone. No note from FedEx. Just a Chewy.com box.]
By the time I went to work last night, I was frazzled. I’ve been part of a small cohort in QC this week while most of the « Midnight Society » team has gone to inbound processing. Because of body stiffness I only made 113 fixes Tuesday and Wednesday night. I’ve lost my mojo.
Last night I started strong, doing 9 fixes every 30 minutes. But by lunch I had slowed down and couldn’t get my speed back up.
I was stressing way too much about the numbers— not in a mental way, as I knew the number who improve from my two “bad nights” and life happens. Physically though it was harder to breathe, my heart quickened and my stomach quivered. And I knew it was a panicked feeling from the stress of everything.
I opened my Ginger Mental Health app. I reached out to a counselor who said something about a mental vacation and that sounded like an amazing idea. (Stitch Fix offers free access to Ginger for its employees.)
She sent me a meditation but my mind had already drifted away to my own memories of vacation in Yemen and Djibouti. I thought about how soothing the call to prayer on the loud speaker was. Video: Call to prayer Djibouti City and if you want some Afar dancing and singing: Afar dancing (only snippets because on Lac Abbé we didn’t have electricity and I didn’t want my phone to go dead.)
And I thought it would me beautiful to hear that right now. I found this on Spotify: Life of the Prophet. That brought me peace.
In 45 minutes, I need to leave for work. It’s Thursday and I feel like I haven’t stopped moving all week. I’m behind on my own commitments and starting to feel panicked.
The pop up kitten cafe fundraiser for Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab is this Sunday.
Although it has required effort from many people, in the last few days this has become my baby.
In the last 24 hours, we received commitments from Just Born candy and Target #2536 (the same Target where I used to work and that experienced a fatal shooting in the parking lot last weekend).
This brings our list of supporters to:
Many individual bakers
Easton Baking Company
Philly Pretzel
Wawa
Wegmans
Giant Food Stores
Keystone Snacks
Chocolate Works
Target
Just Born
Today the teenager and I will be heading to Keystone Snacks to get the Veggie Chips donation.
So that’s the fundraiser but meanwhile real-life goes on. I haven’t worked on William Prystauk‘s upcoming novel in his Kink Noir series, Bondage, in several days. Our personal cat, kitty cancer survivor Opie has a very goopy, wet eyes. This is very unusual for Opealope so I gave him a couple treatments with a chamomile tea eye wash for cats grown and prepared by our fellow foster, Granola Cat Lady.
Despite all this (and only 5 hours sleep from sharing my bed with the teenager’s dog, F. Bean Barker), I still made it to Apex Training for leg day and some warm-up core work. My body was very stiff after that, not really from the workout but because my period is late and doing things to my body.
Although I have to admit I fell on the way to the gym and broke the screen to my iPhone. After 3.5 years I now get to test my SquareTrade insurance.
The other big news is that the teenager installed a new toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom. The old one had screws so stripped it kept falling off while you were sitting on it. Bad news is: our bathroom is 1950s Flamingo Pink. The new toilet seat is white— the only one they had. I hate white toilet seats on colored bowls but I also hate “falling in.” And now that she’s seen it, the teenager agrees.
I finally tried my Emmi Roth cheddar cheese snacks from Hungryroot which were supposed to be for tuna artichoke melts but I couldn’t bring myself to use such fancy cheese on a grilled cheese sandwich. A colleague and I were talking about snacks & cheese so I brought her some and we tried it at the Bizzy Hizzy.
She loved it so much she googled where to buy it. Apparently it’s only available in Wisconsin and Switzerland. It literally melts in your mouth.
After work I went to Sheetz and ordered a pina colada lemonade with immunity boost with my bonus points. It tasted like candy, too thick to be refreshing but definitely very summery. I added some mango vodka when I got home. (Here’s a video if you want to see me talk to myself in a parking lot at midnight.)
And finally, not sure if I mentioned it on the blog, but I’m another step closer to resolving the great EZ Pass Drama of Summer 2021. Did you ever procrastinate something so long it bit you in the ass?
Yeah, so that’s what happened to me.
So, our Nissan Ultima (oh how I loved that car) died suddenly. My husband and I were still together and only had one car. He replaced the Ultima was a used Nissan Juke— a car he had wanted for a while. We moved everything from the Ultima into the Juke.
I had ordered an EZ Pass when I started work on my master’s in world history at West Chester University and was driving down the turnpike at least once a week.
So I knew that the EZ Pass was connected to my car— the Ultima— but I never really used it. I forgot about it. And then I bought my Jetta because I hated the Juke. Our family didn’t really go anywhere. I worked retail so I never really got time off. I had stopped working on my master’s as money got tight and my marriage continued to fail.
I neither returned nor updated the EZ Pass.
My husband returned the box of random things from the Ultima and I, with other things on my mind, tossed the transponder in my car hoping to remember to update it.
I never did.
At this point, I don’t even remember how to access my EZ Pass account.
This summer, the teenager took her grandmother to Cape May. She pulled up to the first toll booth and the toll collector yelled at her for trying to pay the toll.
Being a dutiful child, she trusted the toll collector who told her she had an EZ Pass.
Two weeks later, we get two violations from NJ EZ Pass. $30 in missed tolls and $55 in administrative fees. My daughter and I send a check, but I also send an email stating that I understand I hadn’t updated the EZ Pass, but my daughter had tried to pay the toll and the toll collector yelled at her.
They cashed the check.
Then a couple weeks after that I get a letter from PA Turnpike EZ Pass stating I had insufficient funds in my account and they were threatening to ticket me. Now, my EZ Pass was on a credit card. That credit card expired one month before my daughter’s trip.
I call the number. Because I don’t know my account pin or my transponder number, I am forced to leave a message and they say they will call me back. That was Monday.
A couple days ago I get another letter from NJ EZ Pass. They claim I didn’t pay one of the two violations. I send another email and send them a screen shot from my banking app of the cashed check.
It’s now Thursday. I go to PA EZ Pass and try to remember all my account info. I easily succeed. I look at the “insufficient funds.” $5.37 cents. They also demand $35 to load my account fully. Even though I haven’t used it in three years.
And you can’t just pay what you owe.
I then go to the “manage vehicles” tab, add the Jetta and delete the Ultima. That took five minutes. Had I done that years ago, I could have avoided the whole drama.
The pandemic has prompted a lot of discussion about job loss, job growth, and changes in the economy. Other discussions have talked about the impact of various lockdowns and work from home situations on animal welfare, adoption and rescue groups.
** disclaimer: I am not an expert on any of these issues and the following blog post is a collection of my anecdotal experience during my life and in the last year.
In mid-July last year (2020), I lost my job at a small local nonprofit with an operating budget of more than two million dollars annually. My job loss stemmed from my supervisor’s dissatisfaction with my performance after she asked me to move from a job I was extremely good at to a job I had absolutely no experience in. (Forgive these excess prepositions because this experience was so stressful I don’t want to waste time perfecting my grammar because even writing about it gives me great anxiety.)
Around the same time, we had asked Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab for help neutering the two about 9 month old brothers, Misty and Fog, that we had trapped at our neighbor’s house.
Now, during my newspaper layoffs and even when I left other jobs, my health insurance lasted until the end of the month as the premium at been paid. Forgive my snarkiness, but at this particular human services non profit agency, the powers that be (as there is no human resource department or trained human resource professional) cancel your medical benefits on your last day to save money for the agency, because if they dispose of you before the 15th (or so I was told) the insurance agent refunds the monthly premium.
As soon as I learned I was losing my job, I asked my husband (at that point we had been separated for a year) if he could put me on his medical insurance as of August 1. After all, my July premiums had been paid.
So you can imagine my surprise when I was suddenly without medical insurance for two weeks.
Now, from what I understand, COBRA benefits can be purchased retroactively. And our local hospital has a good charity care program.
But still.
So that’s the background. We’re in a global pandemic, I’m unemployed and have $5,000 to my name, no medical benefits, and two male kittens coming of age.
Enter FURR.
When they helped us get low-cost neutering for our “greybies,” we thanked them and I said the fateful words, “I wish I had the money to give a nice donation but I just lost my job. But if you ever need a foster, I’m willing to help.”
Foster cat godmother gave us our first batch of kittens July 31.
Yes, we have been fostering with FURR for a year and a week. Foster cat godmother can’t believe that and says it feels like we’ve been around for an eternity.
Now, if you are one of my friends or a regular reader, you may recall that on August 1, our sassy little black kitten, Hades, bit me as I tried to medicate her infected eyes.
I went to urgent care that day as the finger was growing redder and redder. This was the very first day I had medical benefits and honestly I was scared that they might give me trouble as my insurance had lapsed. Was that fear rational? No. But was in understandable in American society? Hell, yes.
About six a.m. August 2, I went to the ER because the finger had swelled (despite antibiotics) and I could no longer bend it.
On my second day of renewed medical insurance.
I was in the hospital for four days. First time ever, other than during childbirth.
My neighbor— an economics professor at a local community college— and I had the discussion this winter: Who should be responsiblefor healthcare?
I abhor the idea that this is the domain of the employer. Your access to affordable medical care should not be tied to your job. I believe— even without “socialized medicine” (which I 100% believe in but think certain improvements are attainable without it)— with proper regulation from the government and this system abolished, individuals could find their own health care.
Insurance companies would have to shift their market to individuals instead of employers, and they would have to adapt and market more affordable products but would make their money by attracting as many individuals as they could.
Anyway, the teenager and I were talking about insurance and I was thinking about all of this.
The second Hungryroot box arrived and I was very excited to have it delivered on a Saturday when I would be here to open it and have more time to cook it. Unboxing here.
Gayle, my graphic design support system and Parisian Phoenix business partner, brought me the photo frames and the pin-the-bow-tie-on-the-kitten game.
We took some shots for social media to thank our corporate sponsors: Wegmans and Giant Food Stores, and product donors Wawa,Philly Pretzel, Chocolate Works and Keystone Snacks.
Fostering cats with Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab involves a lot of love, a lot of patience and, often, a lot of common sense problem solving skills.
It’s like babysitting— having responsibility for someone else’s living creatures.
Touch of Grey
Touch of Grey has some balance issues and can be very agressive. She can also be a sweet cat, but she has several triggers which lead us to believe she may have been abused or mistreated. For instance, she freaks out when you are handling blankets.
Yesterday, as I was bringing the laundry up from the basement and Touch of Grey ran full force into my legs and bounded down the stairs.
Now if TOG doesn’t want to be handled, she will attack. So I tried to coerce her upstairs. She didn’t want to.
There’s a big tote of old blankets in the basement and she likes to sleep in there so I figured she would take a nap and come up at meal time.
But she didn’t turn up.
So we checked around the basement and didn’t see her in any of the usual spots. But it’s a basement. Cats have expert hiding skills.
We put out a bowl of kibble.
In the morning, still no TOG. We heard a rumbling in the ductwork. Now we know there is a spot under the stairs where the cats can get into the bottom of the hardwood floor and make their way into the cool air return.
In the past, I have already lifted the grate in the living room to let her out. But even there we couldn’t find her.
And we heard metallic grumbles.
The teenager asked our firefighter neighbor to come help her check the ducts.
Touch of Grey was in the bottom of a duct, with a freshly dead mouse. We suppose she chased it and fell into the lower ductwork.
Thank goodness, she is safe.
In other news, one of our other FURR cats, Khloe, decided to attack the vacuum cleaner while I was tidying today. I immediately turned it off. Let her think she defeated the large plastic mechanical animal.
This weekend was hectic and quiet at the same time.
Saturday Nan and I canned some corn relish/salsa with some farm fresh corn on the cob. My mother-in-law, having grown up on a farm, knows her corn and has a gift for picking delicious corn.
Nan, as a lifelong blind person, has a fascination with all things cooking. She always says that she doesn’t understand how people learn these things. I told her I don’t quite remember how I learned to can, though I do know I always had an interest in gardening and in preserving the rich variety of foods we have in this region.
But it was fun to see Nan respond to the tools involved in canning.
Yesterday, Marsand Minerva attended an adoption event with our cat rescue group Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab. Meanwhile, the teenager and I volunteered with the FURR kitten event and backpack distribution through the Verizon Store in Forks Township. Our foster Touch of Grey came from there. They actually have foster cats free roaming the store!
The teenager and I finally got our FURR t-shirts. I’m very excited. The teenager looks really good in hers.
Meanwhile, at home, our foster tripod Louise has been very cuddly and at my side relatively non-stop.
Louise
AndI finished the proof for Manipulations. The book designer (my partner Gayle) will check out the file tomorrow.
My friend Bill sent me the manuscript for his next book in the Kink Noir series, Bondage. I’ll start my review sometime this week.
And finally, I made a list of all the authors and books that I hope to publish via Parisian Phoenix.
I was shocked how many titles were on the list. I hope I have the resources and the marketing prowess to do these books justice.
6:50 a.m My foster cat Louise sees me roll over and starts licking my face and then, when I ignore her, hobbles her tripod self to my feet and starts licking them.
7 a.m I reluctantly rise, give Louise and her foster sister Khloe and my personal cat (and fellow tripod) Opie some kibble. I feed the cockatoo and the parakeet.
I want to go downstairs for coffee, but the dog and the teenager are sleeping there and I’m not ready to see the dog yet.
7:15 a.m. I manage to get dressed and sit down at my desk to do some adulting before my 7:45 phone call.
7:30 a.m. I’m cuddling cats. Khloe disapproves of me using my desk. She thinks it is here.
7:40 a.m. Khloe is grouchy (the whole territorial dispute over the desk). So I start working with her. I show her she can take out her anger on toys. I take a video because she’s so cute.
7:45 a.m. My cat foster godmother texts. “Your phone went right to voicemail.”
I had to admit I got distracted by my fosters. See the video of Khloe here. My phone was filming video so it blocked the call.
Louise
7:50 a.m. Great talk about cat foster godmother about statistics about Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab and what programs we want to promote as we start the media push for our pop-up cat café August 15.
8:20 a.m. Finally get that cup of coffee, let the dog out, feed our personal cats and our current foster kittens Em(inem) and (Slim) Shady. I even include the foster who thinks she runs the whole house—Touch of Grey.
Touch of Grey. She’s spicy.
8:45 a.m. Having had coffee, I now have the bandwidth to meet my right-hand-gal Janel for coffee and continuing planning the fundraiser cat café.
9 a.m. Janel and I brainstorm and make notes while gulping coffee. We honed out our goals and schedule for the next week.
10 a.m. I leave Janel’s patio and head to Nan’s apartment. Nan is coming to my house so I can help her with recent projects. She calls me her computer wizard but really it’s more of an assistant type thing and I feed her.
10:30 a.m. Nan is sipping chai. Nan loves my chai.
Noon We wrap up official work and Nan accompanies me to the kitchen. I try to make “cauliflower steaks” and the teenager prepares Nan a bowl of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I mention I have a dozen ears of local sweet corn I need to shuck and cook as I committed to canning corn relish. Nan mentions she has never seen someone can. I promise to include her.
1 p.m. I take Nan home and come home and take a nap.
1:30 p.m. While I am napping, the teenager lays on the end of my bed and orders a refurbished MacBook pro on my Amex.
2 p.m. I get ready for work.
2:40 p.m. The teen drives me to work so she can keep the car for her therapy appointment. We stop at Dunkin so I get get a large lemonade which I keep putting ice in and drink on every break.
3:20 p.m. I learn a work friend has cancer.
3:30 to midnight I fold clothes (123 fixes) at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy.
This weekend was a strange blend of trying to catch up, trying to get ahead and trying to touch base with friends I haven’t seen in a while.
Love Boat
Bill Prystauk (the author of the Kink Noir book series) took the teenager and I to Jasmine for sushi and sashimi. We had a love boat where I tried and enjoyed sashimi for the first time: white tuna, salmon and some clam thing that tasted like a seafood gummy bear.
This week I have a commitment every morning and the Bizzy Hizzy every night. I don’t anticipate voluntary time off because the warehouse won’t have computers on August 2 so that will be another 3-day weekend.
The FURR Pop Up Cat Café is reaching some critical mass as FURR volunteers get more involved and excited. Tomorrow I have a 7:45 phone conversation scheduled with my cat foster godmother and an event planning meeting at 9 will Janel. Still no update on a coffee provider… I’m getting nervous.
But Joan Z agreed to take photos, Gayle is helping design some games.
Then at 10, I’ll be meeting Nan. And at 1, I’ll cook lunch and get ready for my Stitch Fix shift.
This week, I have two training sessions with Dan at Apex Training. Tuesday and Friday. As part of my recovery after these workouts, these might be my main days to do my edits and proofs on the final file for Manipulations. Official launch date is September 11.
Wednesday I visit the chiropractor (and I can’t wait to see what she thinks about my new fitness routine) and Thursday I see my primary care physicians and his residents about my anemia.
I mention all of this because these are the weeks when one has to focus on food prep, proper rest and activities to maintain mental balance.
Today marked my first lower body work out with Dan at Apex. I did something I rarely do and wore a little tennis style athletic skirt to the gym. I don’t like wearing shorts. There are two reasons why.
1. I honestly don’t like my flesh touching various surfaces: hot car leather, wooden chairs, the concrete if I sit on my steps, of course “thigh rub.” You get it.
2. But I also don’t like to see my lower body in motion. It’s a visual reminder of my physical issues.
So exposing my legs to a relative stranger was a way of me making myself vulnerable. But if Dan is going to monitor and critique my form, he can see my knees.
Lower body. I was so… not anxious, not scared. Maybe trepidation? We did pretty standard upper body exercises. Easy starting point. Dumbbells. I was happy with it. Very happy. (See more here.)
Dan brought his six-month-old son. What a happy, charming, beautiful baby. He didn’t mind seeing my knees.
And right away, Dan put me at ease. I’m impressed by the depth of his knowledge— my physical therapists have explained the same info to me so I know he’s done his homework on normal physiology.
Our exercises yesterday included a supported squat using some overhead ropes (that was amazing! I felt like I could move like a normal person. I could have done that all day.); some mild lifts with a plate that was like a full body deadlift, slowing stretching out the whole self; and some squats with a resistance band moving up and down from a bench. Many of these movements required great concentration on my part but I knew from past physical therapy that he was nailing it.
He apologized for not working me harder but he wants to focus on getting everything moving and flexible again so I don’t get hurt.
That isexactly what I need right now. I shouldn’t be working out hard. I just want to establish the habit, get my metabolism working again, and oil the machine, so to speak. I am so thrilled. Giddy.
And I walked slowly home with no falls.
As my rest period at home, I finally wrote the solicitation letter for FURR’s Coffee and Kittens pop-up cat café August 15 at Forks Community Center. The organization is working hard, my former employee and friend Janel and I are brainstorming away and reaching out to potential sponsors.
I hope to have FURR volunteers give five minute talks or demonstrations on various cat topics: TNR, basic cat care, how much cats can reproduce, declawing and cat scratching behavior, working with hissy spitties, cat body language, trimming nails, seniors for seniors, why kittens aren’t easy.
Activities will include live kittens in play pens to cuddle, cat story time (I will read cat stories), and musical chairs with cat-themed music. We hope to have some raffles— the chance to name some kittens, hopefully some prizes. And cat merchandise for sale.
As I mentioned last week, neighborhood events coincided with the teenager’s pet sitting commitments to have us at full capacity with dogs— except for Buddy who at the last minute got to go on vacation with his family.
Little Dog Sobaka’s mom left for a wedding in Western Pa., allowing me the time to teach Sobaka that Bean might be scary but she’s really just a big, dumb puppy and not a threat.
And the teenager decided to test Sobaka’s ingenuity and made her eat her nightly supper from a dog puzzle. Bean would have just eaten the puzzle.
On Friday night, Baki and I slept in my bed with Louise and Khloe hiding under the bed. On Saturday, the teenager left for her housesitting job, so I planned a sleepover in the living room—Baki and I in the hand-me-down pull-out couch bed and Bean in her downstairs crate.
Bean and Sobaka
The clientele for the week includes 2 dogs (one geriatric German shepherd with mobility struggles), two personal cats, one Senegal parrot and at least eight foster kittens who all need meds.
My daughter is a very special pet sitter. I have heard horrible stories and witnessed some of friends hiring people to care for their pets and these people neglect their wards. When my daughter accepts a job, her focus becomes that household and my job is to make sure I maintain standards at home. She spends a lot of time doting on animals.
The clientele for the week
I provide back up and moral support and make sure the pet sitter doesn’t live on diet soda and chips for the week. She usually has me over to the home once or twice so I know the basics should she need to leave or needs help.
Last night the “can you come see if the cat likes you better than he likes me” request ended up being a three hour visit because she wanted me to shoot video of how well the German Shepherd was doing to set the family at ease.
And a little after 8 pm, I announced I was going home to make supper.
“I forgot the food you told me to take,” the child says.
It’s almost 8:30 on a Sunday night in the town where her father grew up and not our own— the mom and pop places are closing up and I don’t have the time or patience for a sit down meal.
We find Tuscana Pizza & Pasta. The first thing I see when I walk in the door is empanadas. There are seven slices of pizza on the counter, a pile of garlic knots and the empanadas.
There are three slices of pepperoni, one plain, two sausage and peppers and one meat lovers.
We take one of each and some garlic knots. $16.47.
They start speaking Spanish to each other at the register. When everything gets done, they take it out of the oven, throw it in a large pizza box, hand it to us and tell us goodbye.
Obviously they were trying to close the restaurant and didn’t want us hanging around.
We were okay with that. We ate in the car.
The sausage and pepper slice was really good, but I don’t like onions so I could only make it through half. The garlic knots were soft— I’m used to them being like chunks of pizza crust but these were like dinner rolls smothered in butter and garlic.
I love neighborhood pizza shops. I love the ambiance. I love them simple. I wish they’d stop trying to be full fledged restaurants and push slices and pies and sugary concoctions like the mysterious red “jungle juice” of my youth and arcade games and pinball.
My daughter— who has apparently spent far too much time in town ordering Dominos or grabbing Little Caesars and eating it four hours later “like a ravenous beast” (her words) on the band bus— always acts like every time we have real pizza, it’s the first time and it’s the best food she’s every had in her life. She moans with every mouthful.
Angel Ackerman 