Sometimes I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Sometimes I feel as though I have no control over where I’m heading.
Sometimes I believe someone else is at the helm of my life.
These times pass. They always do.
I’ve learned after nearly forty years that the most important thing to remember is that I must keep going.
All things end, including the bad times. It’s up to us to seize opportunity as soon as it arrives, especially if we ever hope to be in control again.
A phone call dreaded. An outcome feared.
Yet apprehension died after the word ‘hello’…
Kazon underwent his dental surgery today, a rushed schedule following the strong regimen of antibiotics and steroids that filled these past two weeks.
Despite the very real danger of yet another tantrum by his immune system, the doctor reassures me that all went well.
The recent outbreak of his white cells attacking his own body seems to have been in response to infection in the tooth. It takes but the slightest hint of infection for his immune system to explode in a rage of self-destructive behavior.
He endured three full weeks of antibiotics, two of which included a powerful combination of two such medicines coupled with a systemic steroid, and that seems to have done the trick, at least for now.
A bit later this afternoon I shall venture out to fetch him and return him to his place of comfort: home.
My job is to keep a close eye on him to ensure no infection sets in and that his behavior and health remain normal. Any signs to the contrary might indicate the unleashing of yet another attack by his own body, one intent on protecting itself from infection by killing the host.
What a frightening thought…
I find Larenti to be an extremely photogenic cat. His earth-tone coat accents those large, magical eyes that teeter between green and yellow, and he tends to not overreact when I grab the camera and start moving around trying to get the right angle, the right shot.
Yet it’s when he opens his eyes to their fullest extent that his otherwise lion-like face takes on a whole new dimension, one of great surprise or shock that has little to do with reality. That’s just the way he looks.
I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers: a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track: you’re a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating: you’re well grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl (sportscaster), 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
* If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
[via Jenny]
It starts with something like this:
But not always replete with an arachnid hiding behind the nest, an unwise move for any spider trying to remain hidden from a predator that hunts such creatures.
Still, these multicellular constructs rarely elicit more than knowing glances from most humans. They result from the efforts of a female mud wasp; in this case, the black and yellow mud dauber (a.k.a. mud wasp; Sceliphron caementarium).
Ubiquitous in this area and certainly no stranger at the family farm (a massive shared colony exists beneath the side porch), these solitary yet extroverted insects are as docile as they are beautiful.
Thread-waisted wasps such as this species beguile me with their graceful shapes and diligent attention to architecture. The carefully crafted and carried bundles of mud, such as the one clear in this photo, must meet strict guidelines for use before they are manipulated into building materials fit for such a queen.
But daubers do not always dabble in mud. Sometimes their quest to ensure future generations involves the hunt for dry dirt. Such missions result in a very different kind of birthplace.
When first I posted photos of this kind of nest, even xocobra admitted at a later time that he had never seen such a thing. I felt no surprise in that revelation as the wasp responsible for this chamber prefers solitude and stealth over the more conspicuous assemblies of the mud dauber.
Unlike the nest attached to a window screen on the patio, this common potter wasp (a.k.a. dirt dauber; Eumenes fraternus) found a delicate spot hidden in the foliage of the photinia bushes around my patio wherein she might manufacture the artificial womb that her single offspring would inhabit. I watched her for some time as she came and went, fetching more dirt from a place of open earth near the patio fence, then diligently returning to this location time and again until the pot was complete, ready to be fitted with caterpillars meant to feed her child until its maturity.
Yet once complete, she left the shrubs and found a second nesting site at the border of one of my patio windows. Her activities charmed me endlessly as the container grew from thin base to complete jar.
When finished, she began stocking it with small green caterpillars, each one carefully placed inside before she dashed off to find another. And when the whole of the supply order was filled, she tucked her ovipositor inside, laid an egg, then sealed up the container with yet more dirt.
All of these nests save one already has erupted with new life. That’s sixteen cells for the mud dauber and four pots for the dirt dauber, and only one of the potter wasp nests remains sealed, something I expect to change in the next few days.
Watching these magnificent beasts in their painstaking quest to reproduce has given me a profound sense of scale and wonder.