כְּלוּ Ei mitään! Ingenting! Ничего! Τίποτα! Niets! Niente! Rien! Nada! Khe chaina! Gar nichts! Awan-Ilocano! Kuch nahin! 무가치! Nashi nai! τιποτα δεν!

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Yup...Mr. CT Scan

just told me I have

nothing

in my head

except a shimmering cloud

of Monarch Butterflies

Thank Goodness!

We now know where

QueenJanita's

Baby's are

Judy, The Blissful ,

Home of Monarchs!
(via jeff)


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A Bird sings in the Dark

QueenJanita has expended weeks, days and hours of prodigious effort succoring her babies, Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Acres of garden center plants have died to fatten them up. Yesterday QJ told me one of her profound tales which I, as yet, cannot discern the meaning of.

Her adored caterpillars had transformed into glistening chrysalides. Eagerly she awaited the day of Final Incarnation, the spread of dark wings and the lofting on winds to Mexico.

Off she trudged to work, heart filled with the song of anticipation. In hospital the usual slings-and-arrows of crazed patients and staff greeted her. That day in the saltmines of N'awlin's Health Care System was especially relentless and noisome.

Finally, after many hours of futile labor, she slammed the rubber room doors. Off she rattled and whined down the potholed N'awlins highways inserted on her tiny Vespa to embrace the moment of Monarch Release! The closer she got to her ramshackle abode the more beauty and joy began to breathe life into her tired bones; her coagulated brain.

QueenJanita raced breathlessly into her garden to greet her lovelies only to find row after row of what looked like tiny, broken beer bottles left after an evening of drunken debauchery. Nary a butterfly in sight. Vamoose! Off to their own Tequila Sunrise.

I suspect the Queen probably then applied the Balm of Gilead. Can you see her

.What kinda story is THAT! That child of mine is a deep and wily creature so, I am certain, there is a message in the bottle of her tale. Am I to gather as Rabindranath Tagore has said: “Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark”. Or, that wonders abound in our magic garden even when we gaze not? Could it be Life is just a Big Ol' Stink Bomb?

Despite or because of that amazing yarn of Janet's I am as wretched a piece of species Homo Sapien as you could hope for today. Just as I was yesterday, etc, etc. But it would appear to me that the more bedraggled and frightful I become the more glorious my own garden gets. Never no mind QueenJanitas'.

I do wish you were here to stand bedazzled before my legions of gleaming white, pink, red, rainbow azaleas and rhododendrons.

"Why lookeee! Over there, Big Biscuits! Are those Monarch butterflies on my 'tunias?"

Monarch of All I Survey,
Judy (via jeff)

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Crawling along

My Dear, Dear Reader,

The last few days prove, once again, the constant ups-and-downs of my illness. I am now down. Skip the rest if you wish. You've heard it before.

The last two nights have had me tossing and turning and fretting, my mind spinning from one fragment of an agitated thought-ette to the next. Then I arise to enter a semi-awake state alternating between stupor and complete obtundation as the sun completes its chariot ride through the sky. My conversations seem coherent to me (?) but I don't have the mental energy (or ability) to follow anything too complicated or abstract.

For example: "Judy, my name is Shelby. I am your niece" would fall in the got it! eureka category for me. But "Judy, I looked out from the kitchen window this morning while brewing us up a cuppa and saw a moose humping Mad Dawg, my chihuahua. Mad Dawg looks like a cowpatty now." Huh? is Doak talking about a neighbor and my trashcan? Is my gown open? Is Ann Coulter coming for tea?!!

I suppose this neither here-nor-there state could be linked to the fact I had a double whammy 2 hour Gemzar dosing on Wednesday and then a double dose of contrast for my CT scan on Friday. Historically both make me more ill. Still, as much as I would like to banish the thought from my mind, the cancer itself, especially the tumors screwing up my liver, must be contributing muchly to the funk.

I have been such a shadow of myself of late I have not shambled out to my deck Shangri-La this season despite a few weeks of lovely weather. And my nesting areas there are just steps from where I tend to sit drifting in and out of sleep in my indoor chair. Paul has even started answering the phone for the most part (NOT generally done in our time together) and handing it to me if I am both alert and compos mentis enough to take a call.

Books? I go through the motions but generally find it hard to stay awake long enough to finish the page. Then I have to re-read it since I cannot recall what I have read. And again. And again. My library consists of one extremely well-worn page. Don't ask me what it is about.

Think "Groundhog Day"*

My life moves at a glacial pace. I wonder if my bad days are outnumbering my good; that with my current definition of good being "dispirited" and "exhausted".

And...my pain is back. Not FiresOfHell. More like that apocryphal frog sitting in the slowing heating stovetop pot of water.

Slumping forward in my chair, perhance to drool,
Judy (via jeff)

*Plot summary for "Groundhog Day". Produced 1993.
A weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing EVERY day. .

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