Why ask, "Why muffins?"

Hey, "the unexamined life is not worth living." (Plato, quoting Socrates, in Apology)  It's why I choose to write about my past (James questioned that some time ago.  I thought at the time the question was impertinent and the answer obvious.) and it is why I often find myself thinking about why I do what I do.  Why others do what they do is their business and only a matter of curiosity to me.  Why I do what I do is perhaps the most important thing for me to know.

Regarding muffins, portion control is the most important reason to form my gluten-free bread in little cups, rather than in loaves, cookies or cakes.  Cookies beg to be eaten in bunches, and cakes or loaves can be sliced thick or thin.  One muffin is a meal.  A second muffin can be a take-along snack if I'm going to be away from home somewhere that appropriate food might not be available.  I'm way beyond setting myself up for inappropriate eating by going out without a reliable prospect for something acceptably healthful to eat.

Three muffins are an overdose, too much carb for me in a single day.  One or two of these muffins might be too much carb for some people, and three might be just right or not enough for other people.  The alternative flours I use because of my sensitivity to wheat and addiction to gluten might cause problems for other people.  Most people prefer cow's milk, but I use goat milk because of another food sensitivity.  I know what's good for me, and if you don't know what's good for you, maybe you'd better be for finding out.

Muffins are fun food and comfort food.  It is comforting to know that I have some in the freezer and can nuke one very quickly and have a treat that is indistinguishable from fresh-baked.  Most of the fun comes from the experimentation, and from sharing those recipes that make the cut.  I have a dandy one for you today.

Line muffin pans with paper baking cups.  This recipe makes about 30-36 muffins, about half a cup of batter each.

Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).

In a large bowl, beat:
6 eggs, then add and beat:
1 1/2 cups sour goat milk (I don't like to drink sour milk, but I find it superior for baking.)
2 1/2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (Fat-free and low-fat are too glycemic for me.)
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (This is more oil than I have used in past recipes.  It lowers the glycemic index, adds flavor and fragrance, and provides essential fatty acids.)
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

In a separate bowl, whisk together:
2 cups garbanzo and fava bean flour
1 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup cornstarch or tapioca flour
1 cup flax seed meal
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1 Tablespoon psyllium husk powder (This substitutes for1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum, which substitutes for gluten to hold the bread together.  I don't like the taste or mouth feel of xanthan gum, and suspect that psyllium is more healthful as well.)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup chopped dried figs

Stir the dry ingredients into the liquids and combine thoroughly.  Measure into muffin pans and bake at 375°F (190°C) about 20 minutes, until lightly browned.  Pack in airtight containers and freeze to store.

 I think I need to take a break from the memoirs for a while.  The late 1950s were not one of the most enjoyable parts of my life.  In fact, now that I reflect on it, I think the 1950s are the main reason I chose to start telling the story of my life with the 'sixties.  I may have been even more screwed up in the 'sixties than I had been in the 'fifties, but at least by then I had drugs to blur the rough edges, and a little more rational self-confidence born of experience, as opposed to the foolhardy reckless self-assurance born of fairy tales and soap opera, with which I approached my teen-age years. 

The first week of February, 2007, has kicked my ass and left me reeling, but even so I feel ever so much happier and optimistic right now than I did when I was younger... even just a few years younger, actually.  Now that I have learned some mental health essentials such as forgiveness and serenity, have absorbed half a ton of self-help books and lofty metaphysical works such as A Course in Miracles and CWG, and have been exposed to 12-step principles and made a few of them my own, life is wonderful even on the days when it kicks my ass.

Today, I took two cats to town.  Fancy had to be dropped at the vet at 8 this morning for her ovariohysterectomy.  Her sister Tabby will have her turn to be spayed in two weeks.  Today, Tabby went in for several immunizations at 4 PM, when I went back to pick up Fancy.  Tabby rode around all day in the hatch of my station wagon in the medium-sized dog kennel that Doug bought as a convalescent space where we can segregate the surgical patients from the other cats and restrict their activity to avoid complications.  Tabby was unhappy in the strange surroundings and very vocal about telling the world.  I empathized, and had to keep bucking myself up to keep from letting her bummer get me all bummed out.

Fancy came out of her anaesthesia agitated.  She had gotten out of her Elizabethan collar by the time we got home.  She rode home in a small cat carrier, and the two cats sang all the way, but failed to harmonize at all.  Doug carried the kennel into his room, let Tabby out of it and put Fancy in after replacing her E-collar.  I think he had to put the collar back on her at least four times before he finally came out and told me he was going to sleep.  I suppose Fancy is on her own for the rest of the night.

Tabby is curled up in a box on my work table, basking in the warmth of the desk lamp.  Koji is curled up on my bed, apparently asleep.  He has been outside doing his bloody diarrhea thing no less than nine times in the 3 hours that I have been home.  Doug said that he had been on my bed sleeping most of the day while I was gone.  He is obviously still sick, but neither lethargic nor obviously weakened.  He moves and jumps with as much agility as ever.

Someone suggested that he might have been poisoned by anti-freeze.  That was one of the first possibilities that had occurred to me.  Doug looked up the symptoms of propylene glycol poisoning, and the only one that matched Koji's condition was loss of appetite.  I think he ate something that has damaged his intestines.  Given his lifelong dietary indiscretion, fondness for firewood and any little bony carcass the cats might leave lying around, that's a likely scenario, and it's a wonder he has survived almost seven years without something like this happening before now.

I did the rounds of three thrift stores in Wasilla today while waiting for the vet to finish up with Fancy.  Greyfox spent the day with me and we had loads of pleasant and meaningful conversation along the way.  Doug needed new pants in a larger size than his old ones, and I found several acceptable outfits for him - some rugged everyday clothes and one dressy black outfit of Perry Ellis trousers and a shirt with a different designer label I don't recall right now, both with a marvelous soft silky hand.  I got pajamas and some jeans, too, plus useful housewares, all very cheaply, of course.  When I was too tired to shop any more, we waited out the rest of the time at the library.

I'm exhausted.  All the long muscles in my legs are burning with fatigue and in spasm to the point that I can barely walk.  I had gone to bed over an hour ago.  Each time I had to roll out of bed to let Koji out and back in again, I stumbled and whimpered.  Before I sat down here to blog, I phoned Greyfox to vent and whine at him.  That always helps, because he never fails to have something to vent back at me about, and he can whine more convincingly than I can.  He is a sure cure for my self-pity, every time.

It is time to put more firewood into the stove.  Koji has been snoozing on the bed for a few minutes.  Maybe he will rest a while and let me rest.  Last night he was in and out a lot.  There were some hours in the wee smalls when I was up with him two or three times, and not a single hour during the entire night with uninterrupted sleep.  If tonight is like that again, I will at least be able to get some sleep tomorrow after Doug wakes up.  Even if I don't have a chance to sleep much tonight, I must go get flat and rest.

When the results of my IQ test finally did sink in, I started worrying about the other kids finding out.  In elementary school in California, I had been teased unmercifully, called Brain, Egghead, Smarty-Pants (Thanks, Pauline, for reminding me of that one.  I'd forgotten it. ), but never Teacher's Pet, thanks to my irreverent sense of humor and smart, sarcastic mouth. 

I had developed some social survival tactics by the time I got to high school.  The most effective one was simply not to put much effort into homework.  I could do my period one English homework during business class in period two.  The old guy who taught algebra wrote each day's homework assignment on the board before class started, so I could do it while he was up front yakking and writing out equations on the board, and still be able to catch his errors and correct him.  I made points with the kids I cared the most about impressing, the rebels, for pissing off teachers that way.

Mama wanted me to make straight A grades, and offered me cash bonuses, new clothes, or special treats for each grading period when I did.  It would happen once in a while even though I didn't try, but usually there were one or two Bs in among the As, and even the rare C in courses such as music or art where intellectual prowess and an eidetic memory weren't much use.

I hadn't really liked school, ever.  In kindergarten, I was insecure, scared, and miserable.  First and second grades were socially agonizing and boring in the academic area because I was already reading newspapers and books by then and could do math up to the level my father could, which stopped at long division.  When I was skipped up to third grade in the middle of the term after my father died, I lost what few friends I'd made and had to endure the mutual hatred with the teacher who had to stay after school with me to try and get me caught up with the class in handwriting.

I remember one fourth grade field trip where I got to handle snakes.  That was fun.  Then we moved to Kansas where I nearly froze on the playground.  Coming down with the mystery illness that just hung on and on, relapsing and remitting through the rest of grade school, earned me a new nickname, Sicky.  In seventh grade, I had a science teacher I liked, and there was a math teacher I liked in eighth grade, up until we moved away from that school.

Ever since we'd been in Texas, school had just been a drag, something that took up time I'd rather have spent with a boyfriend when I had one, or watching soap operas and reading books, otherwise.  Other than lots of sci-fi, the entire Holy Bible (King James Version), and Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, during those first two years in Texas I read Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  A brief fling with Alexandre Dumas got me through The Three Musketeers and Camille. 

I read a lot of non-fiction, too, mostly archaeology but also everything I could find in local libraries about Anne Bonney, Mary Read, Captain Kidd, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, Calico Jack Rackham, and other Caribbean pirates of the 1700s.  I'm fairly certain now that this avid interest in pirates was impelled by unconscious past-life associations that finally emerged as conscious memories in the late 'eighties.

Home life was preferable to wasting time in school, but not by far.  My step-father's batty old-maid sister Bee developed a passion for my little black dog (a chihuahua and Manchester terrier mix), Button, and turned the poor little thing neurotic by chasing her down, grabbing her, and stuffing her into a handbag or a big pocket so she could carry her around all the time.  I got used to hearing little toenails scrabbling across the floors, with Bee scuttling after, arms outstretched as she squawked, "Come here, Buttons, come to Mama."  She couldn't even get the dog's name right.

Bill wasn't much saner, but he was quieter and less intrusive.  His quirks showed up mostly at the dinner table.  No matter what we were having for dinner (supper was what he and Bee called the evening meal, but it was dinner to me) Bill always had to have a sour pickle (not dill) and a hunk of longhorn cheese (never any other type) with it.  Everything on his plate got a liberal dose of salt and pepper before he tasted it, too.  Mama had commented on those habits a few times before throwing her hands up in frustration and dropping the subject.

Mama used to throw her hands up at a lot of things.  Shrugging was my favorite gesture.  Mama would even throw her hands up at my shrugs.  Sometimes she'd come into my room and tell me, "Get your nose out of that book and...." do something, whatever she wanted done or thought my time would be better spent in doing.  I resented her efforts to control how I spent my free time, and had little respect for her judgment and little regard for the pastimes she would prefer for me to pursue instead of reading books.  The older I got, the less she and I found to agree on.  Sometimes she'd get all maudlin about how her "baby" was growing up, never mind that my doctors had predicted I wouldn't live that long.

Mama wanted me to stay her little girl, and I wanted to do grownup things as soon as I could because it seemed that grownups had more fun and I might not even live long enough to really find out.  The harder she tried to keep me "little," the more I rebelled, fought her and wanted to get away from her.  When my boyfriend Eddie broke up with me, she was as relieved and happy as I was devastated and humiliated.  After a summer without dates, when school started I started putting a lot of effort into getting a new boyfriend.

My efforts were hampered by cultural mores and parental restrictions.  Mama said that good girls don't call boys on the phone.  Everyone said that girls don't ask boys out on dates.  This more or less narrowed my options down to flirting, and only with the boys with whom I came into contact at school.  I have been trying to recall what "flirting" meant back then.  To the best of my recollection, it consisted of gazing adoringly into a guy's eyes, fluttering my eyelashes (EYELASHES?!?  What eyelashes?  Mine were as invisible then as they are now, and I wouldn't start wearing mascara for another five years or so.), listening intently to everything he said, and making the appropriate approving noises.

As insipid and inane as it sounds, it worked.  The next day after my best friend Peggy brought her new boyfriend Ford (not his real name), with his black leather jacket and ducktail haircut, to our table in Cooper's store at lunchtime, he was my new boyfriend.  A few years ago, I located Peggy through Classmates.com.  I wonder if Ford is the reason she never responded to my email.  If so, I guess she just doesn't know how much of a favor I did her and how much of a disservice I did myself by taking her boyfriend away.

spinksy asked how Koji is doing.

He is still alive, still ill, but is making fewer trips outside.  He sleeps a lot, threw up once yesterday, and has eaten almost nothing for three days.  He drinks water, wags his tail at us and barks at things outside about as much as usual.  If he is in pain, it doesn't show.  His nose is cold and wet, his coat still glossy, and his eyes are bright.  If not for the bloody diarrhea and loss of appetite, and an occasional episode of trembling, we wouldn't think anything amiss.

I think I neglected to mention something that happened a day or two before he became ill.  I don't know if it is related at all.  One of the cats, Buzz, had just come in from outdoors and Koji followed him onto the bed, sniffing him all over.  He even stuck his snoot under Buzz and flipped him over to smell his underside.  After a thorough going-over with his nose, Koji was salivating copiously, dripping and drooling.  Then he started licking Buzz's fur until Buzz got fed up and fled.  Koji followed and kept harassing Buzz until I put him on his tether so he couldn't reach Buzz.

Later, two other cats came in from outdoors and got the all-over sniff treatment from Koji.  Neither Doug nor I  could detect any unusual scents and nothing else other than a little stickiness in their fur.  None of the cats has gotten ill, no signs of diarrhea in the litter box, and I suppose that if the mystery scent had made Koji sick it would have also done something to the cats.

??

For my fourteenth birthday, my mother gave me a portable three-speed record player, 78, 45, and 33 1/3 RPM.  I had an old one that played 78s, that I'd had since I was little.  I had a bunch of Little Golden kids' records and a few old classical music 78s that Granny had given me, but all the new music was coming out on 45 RPM singles or LP albums at 33 1/3.  My new record player wasn't stereo or hi-fi, but it  had a skinny spindle with a record-changing device that worked most of the time, except when an occasional record would tilt askew and jam it up.  The big-holed 45 RPM singles required plastic adaptor inserts to fit the skinny spindle.

When I searched Google for the adaptor image, I wasn't particularly surprised to find one.  What surprised me is that they are now available in shiny metal as well as plastic, and come as earrings, belt buckles, etc.  Now I'm wondering how many people under the age of twenty would recognize this for what it is if they saw it dangling from someone's ear.

I had some fun playing various records at the wrong speeds until that wore thin.  Then I discovered that if I fiddled with the record changer gizmo, I could get it to play the same record over and over.  My favorite tune at the time was Topsy Part 2 by Cozy Cole.  The long drum solo on that side of the record was the start of my then and current love of drums, drumming, drummers and percussion in general. 

My playing Topsy over and over was the cause of much dismay for my mother.  Every time I did it when she was home she would scream at me to "shut off that damned jungle music!"

[BTW:  the Cozy Cole photo is one of over 1,600 shots taken of jazz musicians between 1938 and 1948 by William Gottleib, a writer and photographer for the Washington Post and Downbeat Magazine.  The collection is online at the Library of Congress's website.  I have a small collection of them that includes some of my favorite musicians looking much younger than I remember them.  I had been thinking about posting some here -- I'll try to remember to do that next time I'm stuck for something to blog.]

My birthday came along a couple of weeks after the beginning of the school year, so I got a little bit ahead of my story there.  Right at the start of that, my sophomore year, there had been a problem with my foreign language class.  A year of a foreign language was required, and the only languages offered were Latin and Spanish.  I had been studying French and German at home with books and recordings from the public library, and knew a lot of Spanish I'd picked up from neighbor kids in San Jose when I was little.  I opted for Latin, even though I knew it was a dead language and wouldn't help me any if I became a translator at the U.N., because it would allow me to read a lot of great old classics in their original language.

The Latin course was a popular one because the teacher was popular, something I hadn't known since I was new in town.  The Spanish teacher was unknown to everyone, that being her first year there.  Latin was also popular because Mexicans spoke Spanish and most of those Texans felt superior to Mexicans for some reason unfathomable to me.  The Latin class was overbooked.  We all learned this as we crowded into a standing-room-only classroom on the first day of school.  The principal was there to explain that a dozen or so of us would have to be shifted to some other class for that period.

The options were to take Spanish, or take one of the other available classes and pick up the required language credit during our junior or senior year.  The principal asked for volunteers, and nobody raised a hand.  Then he gave us a second chance to volunteer after explaining that if nobody chose to take a different class, he would draw lots and we'd have to take whatever he chose for us.  I was the first to volunteer for Spanish, and was out of there on my way down the hall to the other classroom before anyone else made a move.

The Spanish teacher, whose name I should be able to remember and might recall eventually, had never taught Spanish before and hadn't studied it since high school.  She had been a phys.ed. and home economics teacher.  I enjoyed the class because we laughed a lot, mostly at her pronunciation.  Several of the other kids were about as fluent in Spanish as I was, but it was Mexican Spanish.  The teacher tended toward a Castillian lisp, which all of us found comical.  It didn't take her long to drop the Castillian pronunciation and start doing it our way.  Sensible woman.

Not long after the beginning of school that year, all of us in tenth grade took IQ tests.  It was the old Stanford-Binet test, expressing the result as the quotient of  a hypothetical "mental age" based on test performance, divided by the subject's actual age.  "Normal" was 100, and the average range was somewhere around about 80 to 120.  I knew none of that at the time.  All I knew was that there were about half a gazillion questions and problems and a limited time to answer them.  Nobody told us that we were not expected to answer all of them, so I sped through the thing as fast as I could.

I had never heard the term, "test anxiety" but I had it, had always had it.  I'd spend sleepless nights when I knew there'd be tests coming up in a day or two, just lying there trying to remember what I was supposed to know for the test and worrying about getting it right.  These tests were sprung on us without advance notice, so I had to cram all my worrying into that time when I was supposed to be answering questions.  I'd glance at the clock occasionally, and try to speed up as we came closer to the end of the session.

I answered the last question, looked at the clock, saw that I still had a couple of minutes, and went back to think about some of the ones I'd skipped because I didn't know the answers.  When time was called, my stomach was tied in knots because of those questions I'd left unanswered.  Then the bell rang and I went on to the next class and found something new to worry about.  I don't recall what it was, but I know there had to be something, because there always was something new to worry about.

Some time passed, and one morning I was called out of class to go to the counselor's office.  The counselor was a stern old lady with dyed black hair and reading glasses she wore on a cord around her neck.  She was also the assistant principal and responsible for discipline when he wasn't around.  I worried all the way through the halls about what I might have done to get in trouble.  I hadn't been playing hooky, and after I'd been caught the previous year, I had stopped putting little cardboard stoppers up the coin return slots on the phones and vending machines to collect change for later access when nobody was looking.  Not knowing what I'd done this time just made the worrying more acute.

I walked up to the front of her desk and saw my test answer sheet lying there with the number "187" on the top, underlined and circled in red.  I felt sick, like I might throw up.  It was those questions I skipped, I just knew it.  She gave me this scary smile and started talking about my test score.  I missed the first part of what she said because I was too scared to focus on her words, just standing there looking at the red marks on my answer sheet.

She said that in all her years as a teacher and counselor she had never seen anyone finish the Stanford-Binet booklet, nor had she ever had a student with such a high IQ score.  I swallowed and realized that I'd had my fists clenched so tight my nails had cut into my palms.  I started breathing and almost fell over from sheer relief.  She went on talking about my school career.  She had my file on her desk.  After consulting it, she said that I'd come there from Kansas with an extraordinary number of academic credits and had continued to earn more than most students because of my medical excuse from P.E. and the classes I had taken to replace the gym classes.

The bottom line was that if I continued as I was, I would have enough credits for graduation at mid-term of the following year, my junior year, when I would be fifteen.  She handed me a pile of college brochures and said she wanted to speak to my mother about scholarship opportunities.  I was so sick with relief and the aftermath of my fear that it didn't really sink in for a while.

to be continued....

It was Friday, which is the new Tuesday around here.  Doug used to have regular RPG sessions on Tuesday and Saturday.  Now they are on Friday and Saturday.  I have an hour and a half before he gets on here and I crawl back under the covers to read.

Yesterday was sunny and not too cold, just a degree or two above freezing when I left here to drive to the Willow library and pick up some Inter-Library Loan books I'd requested.  Crossing the Kashwitna River, I saw a musher with a big dog team, maybe sixteen to twenty dogs or more.  They were heading downriver on the ice, crossing under the bridge right after I went over it.  Less than a mile on down the road, I met another team heading up the valley along the ditch on the west side of the highway.  Both were probably training for the Iditarod.  These weren't sprint teams, and a lot of such training goes on around here.  Besides the local residents, mushers from Outside train on these trails, too.

When I had stopped at our mailbox, Greyfox's pension check was there, so after my stop at the library, I drove on into Wasilla to take his check to him.  He was at his roadside stand, open for business even though there's not much of that at this time of year.  It takes a hardy breed of customer to stand out there in the chilly wind and browse through the rocks, knives and DVDs.  Still, he has had enough sales to make it worth his while.  He is out there again today.

I left Greyfox there and drove in to our favorite thrift store, the Treasure Loft, which has moved into a new location formerly occupied by a gun shop.  Thinking to put off doing laundry a while longer, I was looking for pants.  Found a pair for me, a bandana for my hair, a Michael Connolly novel, and a hat for Doug, and only spent three bucks.

When I got back to Felony Flats, it was near dark and Greyfox had closed the stand.  I offered to take him out to dinner, he accepted, and we went to Yukon's, where the soup of the day was homemade chili.  I had a bowl of that, spiced up with Firey Louisiana hot sauce, and my darlin' went for the whole soup, salad, and taco bar, all-he-could-eat extravaganza. 

I got him home before he passed out from the blood sugar spike.  By then it was full dark and I headed back up the valley.  On the edge of Wasilla, a big red SUV pulling a double snowmachine trailer wasn't content to wait for traffic to clear.  He pulled out right in front of me, making me glad that the road wasn't icy, my reflexes were fast, and both my brakes and those of the cars behind me were working okay.

It was drive time and in addition to the usual commuter traffic there were lots of trucks hauling snowmachines in their beds or pulling trailers, or both -- Friday night and the Anchoraguans were escaping from the city.  It was more or less a free-for-all of impatient passing, trucks jumping a position or two ahead in a line of cars stretching as far as I could see, which on some of the high points of straight stretches was a couple of miles of taillights ahead and as many headlights behind.  Traffic going the other way was light, of course

Some turned off toward Big Lake, and the space between cars lengthened a little, but there was still some risky passing on the curves and hills approaching Houston.  The traffic thinned out a bit more at Houston, and we passed a series of safety flares marking a wreck near Willow.  Troopers were there, with one vehicle off in the ditch and a banged up truck and trailer on the shoulder.  I guess that had a sobering effect on the other drivers, because the string of cars passed through Willow at the posted speed of 45 MPH and wasn't too hasty about accelerating to 65 on this side of town.

The next string of safety flares started at the approach to a curve and when I got around it there were several emergency vehicles blocking the oncoming lane.  Everyone ahead of me slowed down to gawk, so I had no trouble spotting the cause of that wreck as I crept past:  a moose down, and being dragged to the side of the road by several people.  The rest of the way home, we all kept to a stately pace of about 45-50 MPH with plenty of space between cars.  A few of them turned off toward Caswell Lakes and some stopped at Sheep Creek Lodge, but when I took my turnoff it was still a line of taillights ahead and headlights behind, as far as I could see.

When I got in here, Doug said that Koji had been "in and out all day."  He had been out more than usual that morning before Doug got up, too.  I didn't think much of it because of the warm weather.  Last night, about the third time he wanted out, I followed with a flashlight and saw signs of diarrhea, some of it bloody.  He is drinking water, but refusing food.  His eyes are bright, his tail still wags and he moves with no sign of weakness or incoordination.  Occasionally, he trembles, but isn't whining except as he always does, asking to be let off his tether.

When he was a pup, the vet diagnosed him with dietary indiscretion.  He would eat wood (loved birch bark), fabric (consumed an entire old sweater with which I had lined his basket), plastic, paper (preferred newsprint but not the colored Sunday funnies), and any carrion left by the cats.  Through the years he has learned some discretion, but apparently not enough.  I don't know what he has eaten this time or whether he will eventually recover and learn not to eat it again.  We still occasionally find bits of the distinctive colors of that sweater here and there around the blocks where we habitually walk Koji, years after the droppings in which they were deposited have rotted away.  We are treating him the best we know how and have no plans to take him to a vet. 

Doug and I talked it over last night, and when I told Greyfox about our decision this morning he concurred.  I have been putting off needed sinus surgery for over a year now, for lack of funds.  Doug decided to devote his latest Permanent Fund Dividend to getting our three female cats spayed as an alternative to either killing them ourselves or paying the borough animal control shelter to do it for us.  Controlling that population is a must for economic reasons as well as to ease the social difficulties of too many animals in too small a space.  I'll do what I can for Koji, up to and including euthanasia if and when he really needs it or asks for it. 

If he does, he wouldn't be the first animal that has asked me to get it out of its misery.  There was a feral cat we called Sugar, at our old place.  She was truly feral, wouldn't let anyone get near enough to touch her.  Even after she became paralyzed in her back legs she would drag her little body as fast as she could to avoid human contact.  We felt so sorry for her we'd wait until she had left the feeding station before we approached it, to save her the panic and pain.  Her belly became abraded from being dragged around the yard.  One day while I was working in the garden, she approached me, came right to my feet, looked up at me and mewled.  I knew what she wanted.  I wished I could have made her function fully and feel better, but the only thing I had in my power was to make her not feel.

As I have been writing this, Koji has been out twice.  He wants back in now.  I need to get out of  Doug's way anyhow so he can get to his friends and their game.  When I wrote that recent memoir episode, I thought I'd get on a roll and keep going, but I'm still having trouble with the upcoming bits of the story.  It is important to me to be frank, honest and to tell the whole story.  Frankly, I'm a little bit scared because the man whose ignorance, insanity, brutality and penis size (Can I say that in a public post?) I'd be outing, might still be alive.   I shall work on transcending that fear.  Seeya, whenever.