Different Cat
When we first saw Mozyr at the feline adoption center, he was demonstrating some amazing athleticism and intelligence in his play. He also gave me the impression he had good confidence in himself. That all seemed to change when we got him home. His preferred spot for a long while was as far under our bed as he could get, up against the wall. Meanwhile, Pequenita, who is half his size, proved to be as bold as he was shy.
For all I know, she contributed to his apparent loss of confidence. There was a brief spell when she seemed to take control of him, banishing him from the bedroom altogether. At the same time, he would bully her off the food, so it seemed like there was an exchange of the dominance roles going on.
He was skittish about receiving affection, and resisted being picked up. He behaved very shy around visiting family and friends. I found myself referring to him as being a chicken, and had begun to think he was just going to be a distant cat that tolerates people as a necessary evil in order to get fed morning and night and have his litter box cleaned.
After a long period of these behavior patterns, he surprised me with a change, suddenly deciding to show up in the bathroom during my evening routines. He would often jump up beside the sink to check out what I was up to, and several times he even laid down right in the sink I was trying to use. He seemed to be indicating that I was his choice for a buddy, but it stayed entirely on his terms. If I tried to pick him up, or give him attention at a time of my choosing, I got rebuffed.
That all went away these last few months, when he seemed to get out of sorts around the time we had company, and then throughout a couple of his recent illnesses. He gave us a scare last Wednesday, when he appeared to be really sick. A quick online search turned up several instances where his symptoms were listed as having potential to be serious, but also could be something simple that a cat can get over in a day. We are lucky that it appears to have been the latter.
We made it very clear that we were trying to help him, and he seemed to respond overnight. He continues to seem better everyday and not only is more like his old self, he is that and beyond. He is a changed cat, as if this illness did something to him. I’ve never had him sit in my lap before.
Yesterday, as I was reading on our couch (and Delilah was outside in her kennel), Mozyr showed up –that in itself being a rare occurrence lately– and proceeded to lay on the book in my lap –an unprecedented occurrence! These last two days, he has met my gestures of attention with greater acceptance than he has ever shown before. I pulled the book out from under him and continued to read. He laid in my lap so long that I decided I should get a picture.
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Never assume your pets won’t change their behavior toward you, especially if you base that assumption simply on how they have behaved with you for the year prior.
Change happens.
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Hunter’s Run
I finally got around to uploading the video Cyndie shot of Hunter playing with the exercise ball out in the snowy field. If you recall, I tried to capture a video of Legacy playing with the ball a while back, and all I got was Dezirea walking up and putting her nose in front of my camera. That got Legacy’s attention and he walked away from the ball toward me.
Fast forward to mid-January, Cyndie and Elysa went out into the big field with the ball in hopes of getting the horses to play with it. At first, there was a lot of standing around the ball, watching it lay there, or being more interested in Cyndie and her camera. Then, with very little warning, Hunter gives it a push with his nose and then takes off running with it, as if he knew precisely what we had in mind.
It was a joy to behold, and quite a surprise to us. It seemed even more remarkable after the fact, because when he stopped, that was it. None of the other horses showed any interest in getting involved, and Hunter just did his one run and was done with it.
The scene returned to the four horses standing around the ball, watching it lay.
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Alone Again
It has happened enough that you’d think I would be used to it by now, but it’s different for me since we added horses. Cyndie is traveling out of town for work for a few days and I am alone again to tend to the animals. As if being responsible for the horses wasn’t enough, one of our cats, Mozyr, is showing new signs of some kind of illness. Before Cyndie left yesterday, she cleaned up some of his messes and then we went down and pulled the blankets off the horses. It is going to be above zero around here for a while!
It took some coaxing, but Legacy eventually allowed me to aggressively scratch his neck and shoulders after we removed his blanket. Cyndie warmed him up to the idea when she began massaging his aura about a foot away from his body. Shortly after letting me into his space to scratch him, he took an obvious step in and turned to provide me better access. A definite invitation.
I wandered back down to see the horses after they had eaten their evening feed, to take some pictures of them without blankets on. The girls were hanging out by the hay and the boys were both uphill from them.
Cayenne & Dezirea
Legacy
Hunter
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At bedtime, when I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth, I spotted Mozyr using the litter box we brought upstairs for him. That’s progress! After that, he wandered into the bathroom for a drink of water from the dish we keep there. Next, he took a few bites from the dry food, and then the canned food that I had put out at dinner time. These are all good signs. The night before, he appeared to have shut down completely, and then yesterday morning he seemed worse, and was messing himself and lying in it.
We probably would have rushed to the vet if Cyndie wasn’t headed out of town. I suppose I talked her out of it when I pointed out that we won’t spend money on treatments if there is something drastically wrong with him, so we may as well wait a day to see if he can shake it on his own. He is under close observation by me, and so far, things seem to be headed in the right direction.
Since I am alone, I’m hoping that’s the only direction things go for the next few days.
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Playing SparkBall
If you own an iPad / an iPhone 4 or 5 / or an iPod Touch running iOS 7.0 or later, you are in luck to download the latest game craze before everyone you know is already playing it! That is because SparkBall was just released yesterday by Orbosphere Development Studio and is now available for free as an Apple iTunes App Store download.
Our son, Julian, is at it again, and this time he has created a downloadable game. SparkBall is so simple that anyone can play it immediately. It is a fantastic exercise in eye-hand coordination and reaction time on a touch screen that becomes fiendishly hard to quit. If you have addictive tendencies, watch out for this one!
All you have to do is tap the bouncing balls to remove them from the screen. The trick is in figuring out how far ahead of the ball you should tap to avoid missing it as it goes by. That is not simple to do because the speed of the balls is changing as a result of impacts with other balls. It creates an eternal urge to try again. If at first you don’t succeed…
I was lucky enough to secure a brief interview with the developer yesterday evening by email. I figured I better be quick to contact him before he gets buffered by agents and lawyers managing his affairs. I found the man who works under the moniker of “Orbosphere” to be refreshingly candid…
Was there anything in particular that inspired you to create SparkBall? And/or are there any arcade style games you are especially fond of? (This may seem a bit technical, but) I believe the inspiration began when Apple released the SpriteKit framework within iOS7– since I was already familiar with iOS development, the release of SpriteKit brought me the closest opportunity to get into game development that I’ve had yet, at least from a programming perspective. There were already several 3rd party frameworks for making games on iOS, but something about one being “baked in” with Apple made it seem more quickly attainable for me.
Initially, SparkBall was meant to be a different type of game, with a different set of rules. The tap-to-remove element was originally just me getting comfortable writing some code with SpriteKit, just a test really. But it was quickly apparent that it was kinda fun to try to tap the ball as it bounced across the screen. So I set out to make that a type of “game mode” for SparkBall, which became version 1. Perhaps I will still add different game modes in the future.
Did you create the music and the game sounds?
No, Jaywalker did. (So, yes.) Still not sure where to make the distinctions between which elements belong to which “brand name”… because I could also say yes, orbosphere did it. But then where do I draw the line? Genre doesn’t exclude something from the Jaywalker brand. It is the same in the end.
I was working on the song prior to SparkBall, or at least independently of it, originally. Eventually I didn’t really know what to do with the song (or how to finish writing it) and it just kind of clicked– put it in the game. Let it just loop. It will make it matter less that I didn’t know how to finish writing it. Video game audio composition would certainly be an interesting area to explore further for that very reason.
How long of a song is it before it loops? It does loop, doesn’t it?
03:16. It should restart at the end… I can’t guarantee that it loops perfectly in time, but it may be close.
Since you have a job as an iOS developer, was it like working two jobs while you were creating SparkBall?
No, not really. I certainly worked on it at my leisure– sometimes a couple nights in a row when my brain was hooked on certain problems, sometimes I’d let a week or maybe two go by. And I enjoyed the development– I’ll explain it to non-developers that in the right setting* development can be like playing with Legos, only, the bricks are inside your head, as well as the computer’s.
*Right Setting might indicate lack of a project manager hovering over your shoulder, looming critical deadlines and such.
Did you get addicted to playing it when it was far enough along to do so?
Pretty quickly, as I said earlier the tap-to-remove element wasn’t the initial plan. Once it was noticed how fun that was, I was hooked.
Do you like to pop bubble wrap?
Of course. You know there’s an app for that? (And I don’t mean SparkBall.)
Yes, I know there is an app for that, but it isn’t nearly as fun as the increasing intensity of more and more balls to be dispatched on each successive level that SparkBall offers.
Thanks, Julian, and congratulations on a wonderful accomplishment and treat of a game that you have created for everyone to enjoy. I hope it goes viral!
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Walking Partner
The best thing I can do for my back is go for a walk, so as soon as I got home from work yesterday, I headed out with Delilah for a little stroll around the property. She is very entertaining to walk with this time of year. The snow is deep enough that she struggles mightily to make progress through areas of undisturbed accumulation, quickly resorting to leaping like a deer to pounce over, instead of plowing through it.
She is happy to follow the trails left by the deer, or where someone has previously walked, sprinting to get way ahead of me, and then turning to see if I’m still coming. She shows intense interest in the scents lingering in the footprints left by the deer, and spends protracted moments in olfactory detection. If I somehow manage to catch up and pass her, she bolts to close the gap and then leaps into the deep snow for several pounces to get around me before reclaiming the trail.
We came upon the pine tree that we picked up off the ground a few times last spring, and discovered it is showing signs of not having survived. It is one of several that aren’t looking so good, and has me thinking we should be planning to do some tree planting come spring so that we add more than we lose every year. We are already behind, because a similar pine on the front side of the house died last winter and had to be cut down.
While I was taking pictures of the tree, Delilah got in some small-game hunting beneath the snow.
She didn’t come up with anything except a face full of snow, which I attempted to capture before she shook it all off. I didn’t get much cooperation from her in terms of posing for photographs, but I think this does it justice.
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I was lucky that the deep snow tired her out enough that she reached her fill of being outside at about the same time I was reaching my tolerance limit for walking. On this day, the deep snow and my ailing back ended up balancing our walking partnership perfectly.
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Boom
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years ago
when it was
another time
when we didn’t know
how things would go
how they’d turn out
in the end
our innocence
mixed with happenstance
as we danced
toward a final hour
our hearts went boom
as we crossed those rooms
and held their hands
in ours
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Life Review
We attended an incredibly moving memorial service yesterday, followed by a celebration of life for a man who made everyone feel as if they were his best friend. What a gift he was to us all. Rob White left us way too soon. I couldn’t help this feeling that I failed to communicate to him, in words, how great a guy he was to me. I have to rely on my sense of how large a percentage of our communication is non-verbal, and that he picked up on my vibe of appreciation for him. It is an honor to have known such a special person.
That leads me to the realization that we are all special people. I guess there are too many people in the world to come to know them all, even casually, let alone well enough to be bathed in each individual’s specialness. Luckily, love is boundless and unending, so I can endeavor to non-verbally communicate love to everyone, whether I know them or not. I am far short of words to adequately express how I feel to those of you who have come to mean the most to me. Being somewhat of a sequential processor, my failing to fully convey my love and appreciation in words to those closest to me would keep me from ever getting around to beginning to tell mere acquaintances, let alone total strangers.
Do other people find themselves mentally wandering into the “it’s all about me” thinking at ceremonies like weddings and funerals and subsequently processing their own life review? When I do it, there is an embarrassing sense of selfishness that comes with it, but it is in my nature. My life feels beyond my capacity to comprehend. Trying to remember things about my past tends to reveal how much of it I can’t recall at all. It is fragmented, and the pieces are disjointed.
I don’t need past lives to explore. I’ve got this mysterious one, right here. Who was I all those decades ago? I hope someone took pictures.
Even if I can’t recall every detail, I do carry that non-verbal sense, the “vibe” from all the people who have contributed to helping me become the person I am today. If I adjust my focus, I can notice that I feel the love of others, even when they haven’t verbally expressed it.
It goes both ways. If I can practice sending out love to the world of souls, I can also practice detecting the thoughts of love which I have been receiving from others. In the end, I think that just might be the more important of the two.
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In Mind
Lately I’ve had Chastity Brown‘s music in my mind, particularly, her song “Lift Us.” It suits me. You know how I feel about love, that it certainly does lift us. I think she’s got it right with these lyrics, and every other nuance of this recording, as well. She wins me over right away at the opening guitar up-strums, but then the way the bass slides to enter with the drums; the background “ooo ooos;” the light balance, yet fuzzy substance of the electric guitar; the emotion with which she distorts the pronunciations –getting “lift” to sound like “leeeeft;” the rhythmic bounce that carries the whole thing all the way to the end.
I highly recommend you take the time to pay extra attention to the details as you listen, but be forewarned, when you listen to all the detail, songs have a way of burying themselves in your mind.
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I was heading down a road
Going nowhere
But I didn’t even know
Ya know I didn’t even care
But along the way
Came a word I was needing to hearChorus:
Love can lift us
Oh love real love
Love can lift us
Talkin ‘bout love real loveSo you say you’re all alone
Drowning in a sea of people
I will throw you a rope
Pull you to shore
So you can feel thisChorus
Talkin bout love
If you’ve ever been on the floor
Aint go no where to go
Just lookin up keep lookin upChorus
credits: from Back-Road Highways, released 24 March 2012
© all rights reserved Chastity Brown
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Mission Creep
Initially, it was only supposed to be gutters for the back side of the barn, but when the company showed up to quote that project, they noticed the gutters on our house. I have had an inkling that there was something wrong with our gutters since last year. They were more than happy to point out the shortcomings. It was a bad design that didn’t last, installed poorly by a questionable company that also didn’t last, so we were told.
I didn’t feel the need to check his facts, because I could see that water dripped from places that didn’t make sense to me. Something wasn’t working right, so we told them to include the house in their quote for new gutters. Mark this down as another home maintenance thing that we didn’t have on our to-do list, and don’t really have the budget to afford at this time.
It’s never stopped us before.
We accepted their quote and authorized the work, which got scheduled weeks out, into late November. They finished the barn in a single day while we were both away at work. When I got home that day, I noticed tracks in the gravel and wondered who the heck had been driving around our barn. I completely missed the new gutter hanging overhead. I think it was because they did such a fine job that it looked like it had always been there and never caught my eye.
After the day they expected to start had passed, I called the company to check on the status, still clueless that they had completed the barn. That was embarrassing. The scheduler was describing the plan for the house, which was fine, but I was wondering about the barn, too.
“We already finished that,” I was told.
Oh.
Anyway, then winter weather arrived, causing the house project to be delayed. I figured that meant until spring, but I have already written here about their plan to work on it regardless the snow and ice. That may be a good thing, I don’t know. I’m sure hoping so at this point, because when they came to uncover the old gutters, they discovered other problems occurring from the ice buildup and suggested one big contributor to the problem was that the venting in our soffits was insufficient.
The project expanded to having them pull the wood to open the soffits for increased ventilation, and then refinishing it with metal fascia and soffits that match the new gutters. How are we going to afford that? Their no-interest, no-payment financing plan, that’s how. Looks like our savings for the next year won’t be going toward an exotic vacation. They’ll be socked away to pay for our new and improved gutters and soffits.
I sure hope the payments don’t end up being due at the same time we will need to pay for the fractured window replacement and the new storage room about to be built downstairs. Something tells me we should be real careful about allowing any mission creep to occur when that builder arrives to do his work.
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