Author: Average Jane

Average Jane’s Productive Day

Toby is not germane to this story, but look how cute he is!

Last night I performed with my band, so you might think I would have taken today for rest and relaxation. However, I felt fairly motivated when I woke up and it was a beautiful day, so I took advantage of it to get some things done.

Not at first, though. First I met up with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew for breakfast after putting out a call on Facebook for a restaurant breakfast buddy because I didn't have enough ingredients to produce food for myself.

After that, a Costco run. It took me five minutes to load my cart with 184 pounds of solar salt and cat litter, which seemed like more than enough for my poor car to hold.

Once I got home, I needed to transport everything into the basement, but the needy foster cat wanted to follow me everywhere. I had to use the studio bathroom foyer as an airlock to load everything in so the cat wouldn't get out or get smashed.

Yard work was next on the agenda. I used my favorite power tool, the hedge trimmer, to shape the boxwoods in front of the porch and the yew bushes on either side of it. I try not to get too carried away with yew trimming because lots of little birds live there. I also cut down the dead stalks of the allium so they'd be out of the way when next year's growth comes in.

Then it was the ugly job I've been putting off: volunteer honeysuckle surrounding a black walnut tree with a stubborn poison ivy vine growing up the side. I got all the honeysuckle cut down to the ground and bagged or dragged into the woods. I picked up some of the walnuts, but we had a bumper crop this year and there's no gathering them all. I also snipped the poison ivy vine with my loppers and poisoned the root ends for the bazillionth time because I am an eternal optimist. It remains to be seen whether I managed to get a poison ivy rash in the process.

After that, I was literally out of energy. I could barely operate my limbs to put all my tools away in the shed. I went inside to find something to eat and ended up with a frozen meal that I'm pretty sure A Librarian gave me before she moved away. At this point it looks like it's not going to kill me.

My husband and I made a quick dinner run once he got up and when we got home I dumped all seven litter boxes and filled them with fresh litter. I learned my lesson from the last time I did that and divided the soiled litter into four separate bags so I could actually lift them into the trash.

Now I'm going to watch TV for the rest of the night. I think I've earned it.

November 9, 2014
Average Jane Takes A Day Off

To begin this story, I think my Facebook updates really say it all.

10:23 a.m. - I would like to thank Yesterday Celeste for deciding to take today off because it was a fantastic and glorious idea.

11:52 a.m. - I'm still in my robe and pajamas. This is the best day ever.

12:08 p.m. - Eventually I need to get dressed, go to Costco, do some housework, etc. But I'm in no hurry. [Note: Other than the getting dressed part, none of this ever happened.]

1:38 p.m. - So far today can be summed up by my favorite quote from Office Space, "I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be."

* * *

Around two I put on comfy yoga pants and a loose t-shirt and took the dog for a long walk that lasted more than an hour.

When my husband got up in the afternoon, we went out and had a meal and returned just in time for me to head out to a party at Cagey's house. There were bourbon slushies there. Delicious bourbon slushies.

After that, I let my sister talk me into going out to see Dolewite, but lazy pajama mode ran too deep for me to truly appreciate a bass-heavy hip-hop cover band, so I bailed out before midnight and went home.

Still, it was exactly the kind of day I needed to finally snap out of my time change doldrums and get ready for the weekend. Really, it was probably more rejuvenating than if I'd taken an actual vacation. I need to do this kind of thing more often.

November 8, 2014
Average Jane and Dentists

After reading Fluid Pudding this week and hearing about her crazy range of experience with various dentists, I felt that it was a subject I could address because I also have teeth that have been subject to professional care at least twice a year over my lifetime.

My first dentist was a wizened, troll-like man who didn't waste any time on nonsense like reassuring nervous patients. That was fine until I finally got my first cavity while I was in college and surviving largely on donuts and Mountain Dew.

The intersection of the fact that I'd never gotten a filling before, the rollercoaster emotions of my youth (I think that was the same week my beloved childhood cat died), and the frightening reputation of dentists in pop culture meant that I was completely freaked out. The dentist was predictably impatient with me when I cried in his office after hearing I needed a filling and wouldn't commit to it on the spot.

As I rode down the elevator in the medical building to leave, a stranger noticed my distress and was so kind and concerned that I realized she thought something was actually seriously wrong. I was embarrassed to have been such a baby about the whole thing, got the filling, and moved on to an adulthood where fillings weren't such an overblown tragedy.

When that dentist died, a much younger dentist bought the practice. He was a big man with a Scandinavian name and it wasn't difficult to imagine him with Viking forbears. I recall his dental care to be quite satisfactory, although I remember my dad complaining about his giant fingers. He was the first dentist to replace that original filling that caused me such distress, along with the one or two other amalgam fillings I'd gotten from my first dentist. I certainly appreciate the trend of tooth-colored fillings.

When that dentist left the practice, a much younger dentist took over. Seriously, I think he was twelve. By then I was in my thirties and it was the first time I'd encountered a medical professional who was younger than I was and thought, "No." I'm sure he was a perfectly good dentist, but I was just plain uncomfortable with his relative inexperience and suspicious of his diagnoses. I readily acknowledge that it was probably all in my imagination, but that was what finally made me stop driving to the other side of town and find a dentist near my house. (Turns out I wrote about him at the time.)

My current dentist is great. His office and methods are up to date, he and his staff are very friendly and professional and they have demonstrated great tolerance and flexibility every time I've completely spaced an appointment.

My only complaint is the dentist's minimalist approach to pain management during procedures. Of course no one enjoys being numbed to the gills and dribbling liquids from their slack lips all day, but this guy goes in the complete opposite direction. He uses the bare minimum amount of novocaine necessary to keep you from leaping out of the chair while he's drilling, and it's pretty much worn off by the time you walk out the door. I've learned to pre-game with some Tylenol before I leave home. Also, I have a pretty good tolerance for pain, which helps.

As long as I decide I'm good with the occasional post-filling jaw ache, I'm likely to stay where I am for a while. So let's hear it: do you have any good/bad dentist stories to share?

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

November 7, 2014
Average Jane Fosters A Cat

As you can probably tell by the number of pets in my household and from stories like our rescue and return of Max the Cat to his family, my husband and I have a big, squishy soft spot for cats. That said, we are clearly at (over) our comfortable limit for animals in our small house and yet…

We're fostering a cat again. It's a risk because he's not associated with a rescue group this time; he's just a really sweet cat whose time at an overcrowded shelter was almost up. A volunteer noticed his situation and shared a photo and story on Facebook and I couldn't turn away.

The shelter called him Sooty because he was found in a car engine at a dealership with some of his fur singed. He's about ten years old, neutered and declawed already, so he was probably someone's pet before his misadventure under the hood of a strange car delivered him who-knows-how-many miles away from home.

He ended up at that town's shelter, which is having known problems accommodating cats. His stray hold expired yesterday and that's an out-and-out death sentence. The woman who posted him pled, "Don't let him die due to bureaucratic crap!" and that's what struck me the most because I'm very aware of how the shelter system in our country consistently fails cats. She knew and I know that as a senior cat, this boy would be completely out of luck if someone didn't step up.

So I messaged my husband with the cat's photo and story and said I thought we should offer to foster him. His immediate reply: "Do it."

As we discussed it further, I said to my husband that I knew a one-off foster like this was the equivalent of trying to hold back the tide with a rake. Still, it's like that story "A Single Starfish." I know I can't save them all, but I can make a difference for this one.

Thanks to our experience with Max, we have a pretty cozy cat area set up in our laundry room. I picked Sooty up last night and installed him in his new place with food, water, toys and a litter box. He's very friendly and loves attention. Unfortunately, he is shockingly thin and doesn't seem very interested in food, so I suspect I'll have to get him some veterinary attention before we can start looking for a permanent home for him. He seems pretty active and bright-eyed and his water consumption and litterbox use look normal, so I'm hoping his problem is no worse than a bad tooth or something like that.

Assuming we can get him to put on some healthy weight, we'll find a home for him to live out his life with one of our friends or by taking him to adoption events in conjunction with local rescue groups.

No matter what happens, I think we made the right choice by giving him a chance. We all deserve that.

November 6, 2014
Average Jane and Death

I don't recall when I first ran across The Order of the Good Death blog, but I liked it immediately. I've had an interest in funeral practices, the death industry and the physical aspects of what happens after death for as long as I can remember.

I read "The American Way of Death" by Jessica Mitford as a teen after discovering it in my parents' bookcase. I was equally fascinated when I later ran across "Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality" by Paul Barber in a box of books my neighbors passed along before they moved. When "Stiff" by Mary Roach came along, I found it even more enlightening, which had me fully primed when The Order of the Good Death's founder, mortician Caitlin Doughty, came out with her book, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory."

Last night Doughty was in Kansas City speaking to a good-sized crowd at the Kansas City Public Library about her book and her thoughts on how death customs in the United States are changing and how she thinks they should change more.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a local reading group discussion of the book and as I listened in, I thought about what draws me to the subject.

One of Doughty's major points in the book is that death has become largely hidden from the American public to the point that we don't even know that we have options when someone dies other than having them whisked off for embalming or cremation.

I thought back through my own experiences of people around me dying and it occurred to me that until very recently, I had never seen a relative of mine after they died. I'd been to a lot of funerals of friends, but only memorial services for relatives.

That's not to say that I necessarily wanted to see any of my deceased relatives' bodies before cremation, but I think it's important to look at the fears behind the urge to turn away and see if there's peace to be made with them.

Of course, that brings me around to what I might like for myself when my own death inevitably comes. As someone who just this morning washed an aluminum pizza pan so it could go in the recycling bin, I'm definitely in favor of an environmentally friendly option. Caitlin Doughty says in her book (and repeated on stage last night) that she'd like to have her body exposed to nature so that animals, microbes and weather can return her to the ecosystem. I like that idea as well, although the "cat in the back yard" method of just burying someone in a hole works for me, too.

I'm certainly in no hurry to die, but I can't help but be curious about the whole subject. It's good to know that the ways things surrounding death are generally done in our culture are not set in stone (I swear that wasn't meant as a gravestone pun. Or was it?).

The book is on bestseller lists, so clearly I'm not the only one interested in this topic. Have you read her book? How did it affect your thoughts and opinions?

November 5, 2014
Average Jane’s Morning Routine

I was never much for a set morning routine until I got Toby. As a former cat person, I had no inkling that adding a dog to the household would mean imposing a strict temporal framework that you could set your clock by. Of course, the dog's rigid internal clock has no concept of spring forward/fall back, so we're wrangling over that right now.

Our first wakeup time every day is between four and five a.m. This one is completely dog-driven. He wakes up, crawls out from under the covers and gives himself a good shake. That's my cue to get up, put on my robe and shoes, and take him outside to pee. Then I give him a small treat and we go back to sleep.

Lately I've been tacking on a few extra activities to our first wakeup period for my own benefit. First, I started drinking a pint of water while the dog was eating his treat. Yay for extra hydration!

Then it occurred to me that it would also be a good time to take my B-12 and D vitamin supplements. Monday morning was the first time I remembered and it all worked out well except that when I went back to bed, I had a sudden worry that I'd forgotten to give the dog his morning pill. Then I realized that I hadn't actually fed him his breakfast yet, so all was well.

Toby and I generally wake up for the day between six and seven a.m. I haven't used an alarm clock in years, so sometimes this wakeup is my doing and other times Toby leads because his treat has worn off and he's hungry. All I have to say is, "Do you want your breakfast time?" and he's out of bed like a shot.

He gets his little scoop of dry food with a bonus pill pocket stuffed with half a thyroid pill while I finish waking up.

The rest of the morning is taken up with making a breakfast shake, choosing and packing a frozen or leftover meal to bring to work, and making myself presentable in whatever way is necessary or practical, depending on how much time I have.

The one thing that's missing is some kind of exercise. My goal is to introduce a quick 5- to 7-minute yoga workout or something similar to the early part of the morning. Of course, it will have a lot more involvement from the cats and dog than I would strictly prefer, but that's just the kind of household I live in.

Today I'm up early to bake a cake for a co-worker's birthday and go vote when the polls open. Thanks to the dog's ongoing battle against Central Standard Time, it wasn't too difficult.

What's your morning routine like? Do you have any adjustments in mind to make it work better for you?

November 4, 2014
Average Jane’s Meme-Worthy Cat

Over the weekend I posted a picture of Trillian to Facebook. She has a classic case of Angry Tortie Face, so she looks noticeably irritated in the photo even though she was actually feeling pretty lovey.

Thus, I decided that she needed her own meme. She doesn't have the full-on Grumpy Cat thing happening, but she does look fed up and cranky. Here are some of the thoughts I attributed to her:

Want to play along? You can generate your own text for Miss Angry Tortie Face at Meme Generator.

November 3, 2014
Average Jane Gets A Fitbit

Just to get it out of the way, this post is not in any way sponsored (not that I'd be averse to that, hint, hint).

We have a wellness program at work that awards points for various health-oriented activities and exercise. If you earn a certain number of points in a year, you pay significantly discounted premiums for your health insurance the following year. That's a pretty good incentive, I'd say. The points are also spendable for a whole range of stuff in an online store, so I figured a good way to use some of my points would be to get a Fitbit to sync with the program and earn me points when I did enough exercise. It might pay for itself!

I got it in the mail last week but didn't get around to setting it up until yesterday morning. I presumed that a trip to the zoo should result in a pretty impressive number of steps and I was not disappointed. I managed to get more than 15,000 by the end of the day. Booyah!

Today I goosed the number of steps by taking the dog on a 3.6 mile walk. I also had band practice and the Fitbit clearly considers dancing around, even in place, to be light activity and countable as steps. I've made it past 10,000 steps today already and it isn't even 6:00 p.m. yet.

I'm curious to see how four hours of performing with my band, bookended by load-in and load-out, registers. We'll find out next Saturday.

Based on my experience over the weekend, I'm trying to figure out what a reasonable weekday step goal might be. Maybe 4,000? Keep in mind that I work at a desk job, so I spend long periods of time sitting like a lump. I'm sure that wearing the Fitbit will inspire me to take the stairs and maybe walk a little over my lunch break, but there's only so much you can do when it's your job to sit at a computer and write copy all day.

Before the Fitbit I had a Nike+ Fuelband. I liked it a lot and I learned that gamification is very effective for getting me to exercise more. I'd still be using it today except that an unfortunate confluence of plantar fasciitis and the Fuelband glitching out meant that I had already let it die quietly by the time I was ready to start tracking my activity again.

I'm already finding myself getting up and finding things to do around the house to keep from staying planted in a chair for extended periods of time. Hope springs eternal that I'll hit upon the motivation I need to counter some of my latest weight gain. If it's easy, so much the better!

November 2, 2014
Average Jane Watches Animals Eat Pumpkins

Last year I happened to notice the Kansas City Zoo advertising their Pumpkin Smash Day, so I recruited a friend and went to see what it was all about. It was so much fun that we went again this year and brought along two more friends.

So without further ado, here are photos of cute animals eating (sometimes eating from, as the zoo folks fill some of the pumpkins with stuff the animals actually enjoy eating) and/or playing with pumpkins.

The lemurs don't like pumpkins, but they certainly enjoy the frozen grapes and blueberries the zookeepers put inside this jack o'lantern.

The meerkats were hella serious about eating their pumpkins. Their keeper said they would eat until they were stuffed and round-bellied, then have gastrointestinal repercussions all day tomorrow. Apparently it's all okay since it's only once a year.

I didn't catch what kind of monkeys these were, but this one was pretty focused on its pumpkin.

This prehensile-tailed porcupine did not wish to share with his monkey neighbors.

Last year the baby golden lion tamarin was very tiny and still clinging to its mother's chest. This year it was the first to investigate the fascinating and delicious pumpkin.

The African wild dogs were mostly interested in the pumpkins because the zookeepers put some chunks of meat inside before they chucked them over the fence. There was a little bit of growling involved.

The hippos each ate a whole pumpkin. I didn't get a good photo of that happening because they got out of the pond to get them.

Penguins don't care about pumpkins, but it's still fun to watch them swimming.

Same goes for jellyfish.

So that was a fun start to the day. I made it home in time to have a meal with my husband before he left to play a gig and now I'm looking ahead to an evening at home with an open agenda. Possible activities for tonight include starting the long book I need to read for a book club meeting a week from tomorrow, baking some pies, and doing laundry. I lead an exciting life, I tell you!

November 1, 2014
Average Jane Resolves to Write More…for a Month, Anyway

See that badge over there on the right? Yep, tomorrow begins National Blog Posting Month, a.k.a. NaBloPoMo, a.k.a. The One Month Each Year When I Really, Really Try to Post Daily Again, Just Like the Olden Days.

I'd like to point out that I've been participating in NaBloPoMo ever since it began and I've only failed to do all 30 days one time (which happened to be last year). Even though I always enter my blog officially, I have never won anything for my participation, which somehow just makes me more cussedly determined.

What that means for you, as one of my beloved remaining readers, is that I'll be posting something each day for the next month. Maybe I'll have themed days of the week; I haven't thought it through all the way yet.

I'll take requests and suggestions. I'll definitely be digging through my big box o' photos. Maybe it'll take me back to when my writing was a little funnier and sassier, before life wore me down to the overly-literal nub of a writer I seem to have become. Anything can happen, people!

See you tomorrow. And every day next month.

October 31, 2014