Monday, June 25, 2012

Angry Squirrel Attacks My Cancer-Stricken Husband!

I am not smart enough to make this stuff up. Read all about critter justice here:




Musings From a Cluttered Life: Call Me Cassandra

Musings From a Cluttered Life: Call Me Cassandra: Cassandra was an interesting character from Greek mythology. The daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, she was a real looker, though rate...

Call Me Cassandra

Cassandra was an interesting character from Greek mythology. The daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, she was a real looker, though rated in her day as second in beauty to the spellbinding Helen of Troy. Perhaps perceptions of her beauty were tempered by the fact that she was considered...well, insane.

Apollo - the Greek god of all sorts of important things like light, truth, music and other stuff - recognized Cassandra as really pretty and bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy. However, in typical ancient Greek fashion, Apollo's gift became a curse. Cassandra eventually did something to aggravate the powerful god and he tweaked her gift of prophecy to ensure that no one on the planet would ever believe her predictions. 


Her predictions were, of course, not trivial things like guessing what the king would eat for breakfast or which goat would be slaughtered for the next bacchanal. Oh no; she foresaw the fall of Troy and other important events of the time. Nevertheless, everyone rolled their eyes at crazy Cassandra. 


This sums up nicely how I feel about my own life these days. No, I'm not the daughter of royalty and I no longer turn heads. But I have an uncanny sense of foreboding. And no one ever believes me.

Let's face it. For some of us, the glass is half empty for a reason. We know that doom and gloom is just around the corner and we wisely choose to prepare ourselves for the worst. And after years of being criticized and ignored for our powerful prognostication skills, we start to roll our own eyes, mumble a lot, and behave oddly in mixed company. Thus, we are considered more than a little peculiar by others.

My 15-year old mutt, who looks like a cross between a rat terrier and a turtle, took a tumble this weekend during an out-of-town trip and immediately began hobbling on three legs. Everyone said "Oh, he'll be okay." But this Cassandra knew better. Ignoring the chorus of protests, I carried my faithful pal to a nearby vet and immediately learned that he has the equivalent of a college athlete's ACL knee injury, but without the health insurance. We are back home now, and tomorrow I'll hock my jewelry to pay for the surgery. But I already know that the coffer will be more than half empty.

Before leaving town this weekend, I gave my 19-year old son - who is home from college for the summer - strict instructions to have no parties at the house. I emailed my friends and urged them to cruise by the house and call me immediately if they observed more than one car in our driveway. My pals responded with the email equivalent of multiple eye rolls. "Don't worry; everything will be fine."

Upon returning home, I spied predictable and ample evidence of at least a small gathering of messy teenagers. Do these goobers not know how to cover their tracks? The telltale sign was a dishwasher full of dirty kitchen items, placed in a dish-washing machine that has been broken and unused by me for six weeks. Plus, melted cheese trails lay atop my kitchen counters, snaking like the Chattahoochee River throughout the State of Georgia and beyond. And the final insult was a can of solid white albacore tuna in the refrigerator, partially contained in a sandwich baggie, the lid punctured and raggedly torn back with one of my professional chef knives.

Before we left for the weekend, I asked my husband-who-happens-to-have-cancer if he felt up to the weekend trip. And I believed him when he said yes, though this Cassandra had a foreboding sense of trouble. By Saturday afternoon, the Trojan Horse of chemo side effects invaded and he fell hard. He spent the rest of the weekend in a carport in 98 degree weather, bundled in a winter coat and two wool blankets.

What did Cassandra dream? I'm not sure, but in my dreams, the glass is always half full. My husband is cancer-free. My dog is young and healthy. My son is a monk.

And then I wake up.

Here's the thing. I see the glass as half empty because I'm a realist who knows that God never promised me a perfect life. I have learned that when I turn to Him in faith, He gives me strength to deal with anything that life brings my way. He does not take away the doom and gloom, but He gives me the wherewith-all to recognize that it's looming.

Now if I could just get someone to listen to me.

(Note regarding the photo: I took this photo in May 2009 while touring the Louvre. The sculpture is Venus, not Cassandra. I can't find a photo of a Cassandra sculpture that is not copyrighted, and I am adamant about honoring copyrights. So use your imagination and pretend this is Cassandra. If no one believed you and you were standing around naked, you'd probably hide your privates too.)