Well, I'd been holding off since December to write another installment of the Ron Big Life Update, in the hope that something interesting would happen. And as of mid-May, still no sign of interesting. But the last few weeks have given me more interesting than I really cared for, so here's the long-awaited Big Life Update from Minneapolis, conveniently complete with Bad News and Good News.
Bad news first - we had to put one of our cats to sleep, due to chronic renal failure. (That's her kidneys.) I will explain.
Margaret and I have had our two cats, Stinky and Pukehead, since we got married over 7 years ago. I graduated from grad school, we got married, I got a job, we moved across the country, I got a new car, and we adopted the cats all within the space of one very busy month in early 1996. The jobs have come and gone (and I'm really not THAT attached to my car) but the cats have been with us the whole time.
Well, last week we noticed that Pukehead wasn't herself. A trip to the vet determined that her kidneys were shot - some protein or other in her blood had a level of 200, and it should have been only 25. The vet told Margaret that Pukehead had less than a month to live. Egad! Margaret and I agreed that we'd give Pukehead the Best Week Ever then have her put to sleep while she's still happy, rather than watch her health and happiness deteriorate slowly. My mission was clear...
The biggest symptom we noticed was that she was weak, and couldn't jump up to her usual spots, or go down into the basement to use the litter box or visit me while I was on the computer. So we moved a litter box and another water dish onto ground level so she wouldn't have to negotiate any stairs. She had no interest in the usual cat food or water, which panicked us a bit. Fortunately, she'd been drinking the leftover milk out of Margaret's cereal bowl for years, and we found that even with no appetite for her conventional food, she'd still devour a small bowl of cold milk straight from the fridge. (And as I type this, I realize that we should have gotten some whole milk for her, rather than the skim milk we usually drink. Rats!)
We thought we'd try another Pukehead favorite - turkey. Whenever Margaret roasted a turkey, we could always count on Pukehead getting the crazies, and following Margaret around with eyes as big as her head! So Margaret cooked a turkey, and Pukehead even ate a few pieces. Not up to her usual turkey consumption, though (when she was healthy, she'd probably have eaten her own weight in turkey if we'd let her.) It was the only solid food she ate at all during the last week. And to add insult to injury, I left the Tupperware container of cooked turkey on the counter overnight, rendering the rest of the whole 11-pound turkey inedible for all parties concerned. (Doh!)
Both our cats have been primarily indoor cats. When the weather's nice, we put Stinky out on a leash and let her wander in the yard, but Pukehead didn't like the leash and we generally kept her indoors. She could easily jump from the floor to the top of a 5-foot-tall stack of records in the basement; with no leash she'd have exited the yard in a heartbeat.
Since the weather outside was beautiful, and we saw that she was fairly immobile inside, we thought we'd completely indulge her and put her outside. Best Week Ever indeed! We'd plunk her down on the patio in the backyard, and she'd slowly make her way to a new corner of the yard while we essentially babysat. It couldn't have worked out any better - when she was inside, she slept constantly and was basically an uncomfortable blob. But outside, she came alive and wandered around with the curiosity of a kitten. She moved slowly, and we made sure that no other wildlife would bother her when she was resting, but being outside made her Happy with a capital H.
And that set the tone for the last week. Neither Margaret nor I was working (I'll get to the employment situation later), and we devoted ourselves to giving our sick little cat the Best Week On Earth. The cycle became a comforting routine: We'd wake up Pukehead, carry her over to a cold bowl of milk straight from the fridge, she'd drink, she'd wander over to the newly-located litter box and take care of business, then wander over to the backdoor where she'd wait for us to let her out into the Great Outdoors. Then we'd go out with a book and keep an eye on her for an hour or so until she got tired. Then we'd carry her back inside, more milk, and back to sleep for an hour or two on a comfy pillow in the sun. A good life indeed.
Margaret and I spent about a week spoiling Pukehead. If I understand that factor of 7 thingy correctly, then the one week that Margaret and I put in translates to about 7 weeks for Pukehead. It must have felt like Fantasy Summer Camp for her, and she purred her way through most of it, despite her obvious discomfort. She really didn't seem to be getting worse, but she had already lost a lot of weight by the time we had her diagnosed, and she had existed only on milk for about five days. We knew she wouldn't have been able to hold out much longer without any solid food, and we decided to have her euthanized before she got much worse. We agreed that we'd have it done on Thursday.It was cold and rainy on Thursday morning, but Pukehead was determined to go outside anyway. So I threw on yesterday's clothes and a jacket and grabbed an umbrella, and followed her out into the backyard. I sat on the bench while she explored a bit in the rain, but she gave up quickly and wandered over to the bench, where she jumped up next to me and crawled up onto my lap. It was the only time that week that she'd sat on either one of us (it was always a sure thing when we watched TV). I sat for an hour outside with her in my lap, cold but dry under my umbrella, with no sounds at all except the falling rain and a faint purr from Pukehead.
Once Margaret got up, we rounded up everything we'd need to take Pukehead to the Humane Society. It turns out, the only thing we needed was a big pillow; Margaret drove, and I held Pukehead on the big pillow in my lap in the passenger's seat. Wouldn't you know it - Pukehead absolutely loved the drive! She was purring the entire trip, and watched in amazement as the scenery zipped by at 60 MPH. From the parking lot, I carried her in on my shoulder, and within about two minutes' worth of paperwork, we left her in one of the cages at the front desk. She was still calm when we left, and we like to think that the end came quickly and painlessly shortly after that, while she was still marveling at the magnificent drive she'd just had.
(For those of you that aren't pet people, I apologize for the letter thus far. This is therapeutic for me, and it feels good to get it on paper.)
In dealing with the past week, I couldn't help but think about when my father passed away five years ago. He was 70, and I guess technically Pukehead was also 70 if that factor of 7 applies. When my father was sick, I felt it was my responsibility to make him and the rest of the family as comfortable as possible - a role I found myself again playing this past week. I'd forgotten the feeling of powerlessness that you have when a loved one's health is failing, and how much it hurts. Yes I know, this time around it was only a cat, but the cat's been around for as long as I've been married and I'm going to miss it. This is the same cat that sat on my lap (or on the back of my high-backed desk chair) while I edited down every single "Crap From The Past" show every week for the last 5 years, and wrote every single Big Ron Life Update. I'm going to miss Pukehead, and so are Margaret and our other cat, Stinky, who lost her playmate. Seven years of joy certainly outweighs our short period of grieving; we'll mourn, and we'll move on.
I have three favorite pictures of Pukehead - (1) Standing in the bathroom sink, and (2&3) Happily immersed in a big box of Styrofoam peanuts. Born circa 1993, adopted Feb 4 1996, died May 22 2003.
[Written June 29]
So yesterday we went to a Twins game. We had no agenda for the day, so we drove into downtown about five hours before the game and planned to just wander around until game time. Plus, you get a great (free!) parking spot on the street if you get there insanely early. It was a great plan, and we even stopped for a snack at an outdoor café on the other side of the river. Until... it rained cats and dogs on the walk back. Big, fat, cold raindrops, lots of wind, and all while we crossed back over the river on the scenic, uncovered bridge. Soaked to the bone, we shivered our way through the entire game. And for you baseball fans, I abused the concessions stand at the Metrodome: I "ate for the cycle" - a hot dog, a pizza, a BBQ sandwich, and an ice cream sandwich, all in one game. I probably could have eaten a pretzel, but I was cold, wet, and running out of cash.
And strangely enough, we also got soaked at a St. Paul Saints game less than a week ago (minor league baseball). You'd think we'd bring an umbrella to these games, but no.
"Crap From The Past" still continues to shock and amaze. This past April the show even got some press from Minneapolis's very own City Pages! I even got a picture! You can't see the top of my essentially-shaved head, but you can see my hexagonal glasses that I wrote about in the last letter.
I noticed that my old band, Thinland, released a CD a few months back. I played drums with them for about a year and a half, and we parted ways 2 or 3 years ago. No hard feelings at all. They even thanked me in the liner notes, although they thanked me dead last; apparently I was the least useful contributor on Earth to their sound. But it's nice to be acknowledged at all, and I genuinely hope their album does well.
Remember when I had The Plague two summers ago? (I really did have The Plague.) I may be one of the few people out here that can look at the recent Plague outbreak in New York and say, "Pah! I had that! It's nothing three weeks of doxycycline can't cure!" Well, I unearthed a photograph of the actual bunny that gave me the plague. The picture was taken on Margaret's mom's farm in Yuma, Colorado, about three hours east of Denver. The bunny was, in fact, cute, so it's hard to summon up the proper amount of hate that such Diseased Rodent deserves. Stupid bunny...I suppose I should discuss my job situation. I was hoping to have some good news by now, but nope. I got laid off last August from ADC Telecommunications because telecom crashed and burned, taking ADC with it. Since then, it's been one disappointing interview after another, including a local law firm (where I'd be a patent engineer), a local college (where I'd be the department chairman for their school of broadcasting), my alma mater Seagate, and an optics company on Long Island, among others. Especially grating is Seagate, where each job requisition will pull in literally hundreds of resumes, some of which are certainly more qualified than I am. It's frustrating to know you're not qualified enough to do your old job.
So optics in Minneapolis is essentially gone. I still have a handful of leads, but they're not going anywhere, and there's certainly no growth in the optics field out here. The situation in other fields seems to be just as bleak - I have four good friends who all got laid off in April. Four! And I don't know all that many people!
The worst part of being out of work is not having the regular routine to your day. Weekdays and weekends all bleed together, and holidays completely lose all meaning if you have no job. For a while, I took on some heavy lifting at Margaret's old store, Williams-Sonoma, and helped them unload the truck twice a week. While we were in no danger of running out of money, I needed some kind of signpost on the weekly calendar. Plus it was cheaper than joining a gym!
And one small novelty item from W-S. When you're dealing with hundreds of boxes a week, you learn pretty quickly what the little icons on the boxes mean. Like an umbrella means it shouldn't get wet. Or a little martini glass means that it's made of glass. Or a hook means that you shouldn't use a hook. And so on; it's not rocket science. So imagine my confuse-ment what I ran across this very strange icon on a box of pasta imported from Italy. No idea. So I scanned it in, and here it is, for your baffle-ation.I'm not at Williams-Sonoma anymore, because I actually found a pretty cool summer job - I'm working at a small music promotion company here in town. I'm helping them out with preparations for a radio conference, which takes place here in July. Plus I'm handling some of their day-to-day responsibilities, like tracking playlists from a lot of the Midwest radio stations. I get paid for talking to radio people on the phone and playing music at work! The main benefit of my working there is my sanity (regular hours and all that), but an unexpected bonus may be knowing all the regional program directors! Cool!
So I'm actually enjoying my summer job. It's like summer camp for me, where I get to decompress from everything from the past few months and even get paid a little for it. At least I know I'm going to enjoy the rest of the summer, even if I don't get rich in the process.
My mom retired this past week. She's been an elementary school teacher since before I was born, and has taught the lower elementary school grades at her school in The Bronx for something like 15 years. And now she's done, just like that. Mom has always had her summers off, but the rest of us had our routines to act as the signposts for her schedule. Not this time - it's just her and the house. Well, based on the past year or so, I know firsthand that retirement scares the daylights out of me, and I hope my mom will cope well with going from strict routine to no routine at all. I heard some good advice from other retired teachers, and a good answer to "What will you do after you retire?" is "Not this." I'm sure she'll enjoy NOT teaching every day, and in due time she'll figure out what to do next.
And now a rebuttal from Margaret:
Well, this is indeed an unusual Big Life Update in that I, the wife, have no rebuttal at all this time.
