Blue-Footed Musings

My eye feels much better today. It’s still a little gunky and itchy, but it’s no longer red and swollen. I’m going to attribute that to the Healing Soup (a.k.a. chicken pho) that I had for dinner last night. Hooray for Healing Soup!

I accomplished a lot this weekend, too. Most importantly, I put my ornaments into their new boxes while listening to Christmas music, so that’s two things crossed off my list from yesterday. I don’t like putting Christmas ornaments away (who does?), but the music helped to lighten my mood. As expected, I changed my mind about how to wrap the ornaments about halfway through, so some are wrapped better than others. I didn’t have enough paper to wrap every ornament, so I reused old bubble wrap for the glass ornaments. Some of the bubble wrap is so old that it looks grubby, but it has done such a good job protecting the ornaments all these years, I figure why not let it keep doing that? Plus it was the environmentally conscientious thing to do. I was already throwing away so much old packing material. It made me feel better to salvage some of it.

Between feeling better physically and having gotten such a big task done, I’m in a more positive frame of mind than I was at the start of the weekend. I hope you all had a good weekend, too!

We’re twenty days into the new year and I haven’t finished everything I wanted to do for 2017. That’s not good. I don’t want to spend all year playing catch-up. So . . .

To finish by January 31:

1. Put my Christmas butterfly ornaments away in the new acid-free boxes that I bought last January. The ornaments were supposed to go in the boxes last year, but that never happened. At this time, the ornaments are off the tree but not put away, so this is the perfect time to make the switch to the new boxes. I can tell you exactly what’s been holding me up. The ornaments will need to be wrapped in protective material before I put them in the boxes. I bought acid-free tissue paper, but I will need to figure out the best way to cut it, then wrap all the ornaments, and figure out the best arrangement in the boxes. Figuring out this new storage system will take time and effort, and I might make mistakes and have to change direction, maybe even order more paper or a different kind, which is all potentially going to be annoying. (Yes, I do have a terrible habit of fretting over problems before I even get to them.) But if I want to keep my ornaments in good condition, this is what needs to be done, so I’d better get on it.
2. Listen to the Christmas CD my friend gave me. My Christmas spirit is always a little slow catching up with the season, and I often have no tolerance for Christmas music until January. But the month is almost over, so I should do that now, while I’m still feeling a little Christmassy and doing Christmassy things like putting ornaments away.
3. Finish up 2017 photo album. I can’t believe I haven’t finished this yet.
4. Finish up 2017 blog posts. I still have a bunch of posts about the children that I want to write so that I can include them in my album. I wish I had kept better notes along the way. Some of my notes are cryptic. For example: “Marshall’s perfect grades.” Perfect grades on what and when? I have no idea. So that story, whatever it was, is never going to be told. I need to finish up what I do remember, while I still remember it, and while it still feels relevant.

I woke up this morning with pinkeye. I knew it before I even got out of bed. My eye felt like a gummy bear had used it as a restroom. That’s no way to start the weekend.

Some days I wonder if I am anything more than a collection of bad habits.

I think that our cat Mojo has nearly reached the end of the line. I don’t know if we’re measuring in days or weeks, but probably not months. He’s having trouble in the litter box. He does unusual things, like climbing into the toilet. He smells bad. His cataracts have gotten worse, and we’re not sure how well he sees. He’s lost weight. But most telling of all, he isn’t eating much, even after getting medication to stimulate his appetite.

The vet did some tests, which came back negative. She says that x-rays are the next step, but I’m not sure they’re necessary. The condition that he’s suffering from is old age. There’s nothing that will cure him of that.

For now, he is still able to get himself up and down the stairs (though his things have all been moved downstairs for his convenience). He still seems to enjoy spending time with us. So he’s not quite done with life yet. But when he unexpectedly jumped into my lap earlier today, I held his stinky, bony body close and tried to memorize the feeling of his purr rumbling against me and the softness of his fur.

We had strange weather today. There was still snow on the ground, but it was over 50°. First the fog would be dense, blocking my entire view. Suddenly a gust would come and blow the area clear. Then the fog would creep back in. As for the wind, some of the gusts were cold, carrying the chill of the snow they had blown across. Others were so warm and moist that they fogged up my glasses, and I felt like I was standing in front of a dryer vent.