A Long and Beautiful Life (A Cat's Story)

Tuesday, Day 5 - Cleaning out the pet food pantry last night, I came across his needles and needle clippers and his medicine droppers.  I was crouched down on the floor, and I hugged the box I found them in, and I cried.  His bottle of insulin is still in its special spot in the refrigerator; I can't bring myself to discard it, any more than I can discard his predecessor's prescription bottle for thyroid medication from 1990.

I will never forget the look on his face as our vet gave him the shot that would relieve his pain and suffering forever.  Ira wasn't ready for the Big Sleep, even though he was full of cancer and he'd been having violent seizures for two solid days, and was so drugged with phenobarbital I don't know how he managed to open his eyes.  I was standing next to Dr. Vega, Ira's "personal physician" - a wonderful vet at Hunter's Creek Animal Hospital - and Ira looked at us both, a trifle balefully, as if to say, "Hey! Not yet, I'm not done fighting this thing!"

And what a furry fighter he'd been.  Over 2 years fighting feline diabetes, taking his injections in the back of his neck, twice a day, like a trooper. Then six months before, he developed horrible seizures, so severe I thought I was going to lose him before I got him to the Animal Hospital, where Dr. Vega was waiting for us.  I'm not sure how I got there without being pulled over by FHP, because I was driving way above the speed limit with one hand, while trying to hold Ira steady as he continued to seize on the car seat.  I remember telling him, "not yet, not like this", and he hung on, and Dr. Vega was able to stabilize him, and he had no more seizures until those two days before he died.

This is the cat that slept right up close to my face so he could breathe the air I exhaled. As he got closer to the end of his long and beautiful life, I had to carry him upstairs every night, while he wrapped his front paws around my neck.  Always affectionate, he became even more so, gluing himself to my left side as I sat on the couch watching television or in bed reading a book.  These days, none of our pets will sleep next to me on the left side, even though I've invited them to do so.  Anakin, the Last Cat Standing, will sit there for a few minutes, but then he always leaves what will be eternally thought of as "Ira's spot."  The real spot, of course, is in my heart.

So I overdid today, not because of Ira but despite my sorrow and depression. I had several appointments, each one taking well over an hour, and I got gas for the car, and I went into Target to check on my new glasses and now I am tired and hurting and bordering on crabby. Someone or something was just driving sharp hot needles into my right arm and underarm, which is scary because that's where I had a tumor removed in 2006.  It was thankfully nonmalignant, but until I got to that point in the diagnostic process - well, you can imagine.

Obvious to me, if not to you, I did not make any additional progress on those empanadas.  Fortunately the fridge is full of cooked food (and I'm always willing to fry an egg) otherwise we all would have starved several days ago, our last coherent thought of unfinished empanadas.

I Get Weak - Beef Empanadas, Part 1

Happy Monday! Day 4 of my banishment approved sick leave.  I can't get out of bed.  My back is on fire, my legs hurt,  I feel weak.  Oh heck, it's been a while since I tossed you an ear worm; let's start this week right:

When I'm with you

I shake inside

My heart's all tangled up
My tongue is tied it's crazy

Can't walk, can't talk, can't eat, can't sleep

Oh, I'm in love, oh I'm in deep 'cuz baby

With a kiss you can strip me defenseless

With a touch I completely lose control

'Til all that's left of my strength is a memory,

Whoa oh oh oh oh whoa, 

I ... I ... I get weak ...

I must look like hell ... all five of my furry children are not only on the bed with me, but tucked up against me.  Always a bad sign.  Well, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and haul my tuchis out of bed.  Owwwww!  

I made some more appointments for the upcoming week - one with my dentist, the other with Decent Nails.  I love the name; after all who would go to a place called Indecent Nails?  The staff all speak Vietnamese and 95% of the clientele speak Spanish.  I speak absolutely no Vietnamese, unless you count "pho" and "banh mie", and my knowledge of Spanish got stuck in eighth grade.  (El cielo esta nublado.  Estoy cansada.  Hace frio, or calor.  I use those a lot, as I am hypersensitive to changes in temperature.)  But I've been going to Decent Nails for years, and I very much like the lady who takes care of me, so it all works out.

Today, though ... today it hurts to stand for very long.  My mind is doing its skitter routine, which is not helped by the fact that I just received another packet of papers from the Department, to be filled out regarding this leave I am taking.  Because my thoughts are mildly scrambled, it is difficult for me to read and fully understand the fifty pages of important information, as well as to fill out the forms before passing them on to the right person.

That will have to wait a little longer ... in the meantime, the sun coming in from my kitchen window is warm and lovely, making it an awesome time to do dishes.  I love having a kitchen window over my sink, and this one faces south, so it is always bright and warm.  I also have a great view of Clyde Street, which can be very entertaining.  All those motorcycles coming from the Frankenstein house ... beautiful hundred-year old houses with stately trees just as old if not older ... the lights from the railroad crossing at what has to be the craziest, most dangerous corner in the state of Florida.  That intersection of Clyde, Clay (completely unpaved), Lakeview, and the railroad tracks is as twisted as Kim Jong-un's brain, and just as deadly. 

But first, I am going to make the filling for the Beef Empanada, or die trying.  I'm not foolish enough to commit to filling and frying the pastry discs today, but damn it, I can at least stand long enough to chop and fry an onion!

This is my adaptation of the Goya recipe found online.  I made several substantial changes, which I think work very well.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground beef chuck
2 packets Goya Sazon con Culantro y Achiote (Coriander and Annatto) 
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon ground cumin
Black pepper, to taste
Crushed red pepper flakes, to taste
1/4 cup Goya Sofrito (Tomato Cooking Base)
1 - 8 oz. can tomato sauce
12 Manzanilla olives stuffed with minced pimento, sliced
1/4 cup golden raisins

Optional re-seasoning:2 tablespoons Goya Sofrito
1 teaspoon ground cuminKosher salt
Black pepper
Granulated garlic

In a large deep skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high.  Add the onion, green pepper, and garlic.  Stir and cook about 5 minutes.  Break up the beef before adding it to the skillet.  Once added, continue to break it up with a wooden spoon (or as I do, using a pastry scraper).  Lower the heat to medium.  While the beef is cooking, sprinkle it with the sazon, oregano, cumin, black pepper, and red pepper flakes, and stir to distribute the seasonings.  Stir in the sofrito, and then the tomato sauce.  Lower the heat to medium-low and let this simmer for about 15 minutes.  Take the skillet off the heat.  Once the mixture has cooled, turn it into a colander set in the sink, and let the extra fat drain off. Wipe out the skillet with paper towels, and return the mixture to the pan.  Taste and re-season, if desired.

At this point, I am going to cover up the filling and refrigerate it until I'm ready (and able) to finish the empanadas by stuffing the pastry discs and frying them.  That's Part 2.  That's tomorrow, or maybe the day after. When pain is the name of the game, you never know if you'll feel up to playing.

Fly Me to the Moon - The Ballad of Darth Kitten

Sunday - What is with this cat?  Anakin Skywalker, my 7-year old kitty, abandoned by his cat mother at the age of 2 weeks, on the side of this house, Last Cat Standing since I lost Ira in August - this previously normal cat, affectionate at times, coolly independent most of the time - has turned into a dog.  This cat won't let me sleep, he won't let me type on the iPad - he only wants to stand on me or the keyboard, or he wants to sit in my lap, occasionally reaching out with a paw to pet me, purring madly the whole time.  The Force is strong with this one.

I lost an hour today and I am pissed.  This daylight savings thing always skews my chi and confuses the hell out of my operating system (the one between my ears).  Same thing happens when I cross into another time zone.  I suffer from jet lag when we drive to Panama City, because some idiot decided to bifurcate Florida into two time zones.  Fly me to the Moon - or say, Portland, Oregon - and I am completely wasted for a week.

The itching in my left hand is so bad I took a Hydroxyzine during the day, which I normally never do, because it makes me drowsy.  Fortunately, I'm not driving today, nor am I engaged in the practice of law.  Depressingly, my normal Sunday shopping routine has totally knocked me out.  There will be no cooking today.  Oh yes there will.  I made Robert an omelet for dinner.  I love making omelets.  He loves eating omelets.  I love omelets for dinner.  I grew up eating these fabulous kosher salami omelets for dinner. Good memories.

Tomorrow begins my first full week on leave.  Part of me is relieved to be dodging the stress bullet.  The other part of me that likes to be in control, is upset that my life has come to this.  The New York subway rider in me is feeling vindictive.  Oops.  Can't let her (me) take control of the situation. This is, after all, juvenile court in Kissimmee, not the "A" train during rush hour.

I think it would be very easy to sink into a deep, dark depression because I cannot go to work. I have to stay engaged in activities that are within my physical and mental limitations.  I have to plan ahead for each day.  I have to make lists.  I have to feel useful.  I have to follow up with all my doctor and lab appointments.  I have to pray, not for me but for all the other people, friends and family, who are facing acute medical issues that are, to my mind, worse than what I am dealing with.  There are so many of them, all ages, so many different situations. Life is not only not fair, it is batsh*t crazy.  The people I pray for do not deserve to suffer.

Oh geez, the cat is back ...

Chip It, Chip It Good - St. Cloud Crockpot Cioppino

Saturday - My sweet Lord.   I really want a cruise.  I really need a cruise.  Not this minute, of course, but soon, very soon.  I have been checking out the cruise schedules at Carnival, and there are several that are suitable in terms of sailing dates, itinerary, and designated ship.  We got spoiled by the Carnival Sunshine last year.  As the family travel agent, I want to ensure we are spoiled again this year.

In the meantime, I am caught in a cooking conundrum which has resulted in my skittering between my pantry and my freezer repeatedly, shuffling cans and pulling out bags of frozen seafood, searching for recipes, rejecting everything and starting from scratch.  I am missing ingredients but I don't want to go out today but I do want to make the cioppino and the beef empanadas.  I just made another cup of coffee, and my feeling is now, screw it, I'll cook with what I have.  So I will.  When my neck and back don't ache as much.

So, I decided  to make cioppino in the crockpot.  This is inspired by a recipe I found at this site, and while I could not follow it precisely thanks to the poorly stocked market at the St. Cloud Walmart, I think I captured the spirit.  Remember, cioppino is all about what the fishermen "chipped in" to the communal cooking pot each day. You can see how flexible the recipe is in terms of seafood additions.

St. Cloud Crockpot Cioppino

• 1 stick of butter
• 2 medium sweet onions, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 bunch of celery leaves, chopped
• kosher salt
• white pepper
• 2 - 14.5 oz. cans of Hunts diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 - 32 oz.container  Swanson Seafood Stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1 tablespoon dried parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• pinch of sugar
• 1 1/2 cups white Zinfandel wine
• 1 pound bag frozen large easy peel shrimp, defrosted in cold water, peeled, tails off
• 1 1/2 pound bag frozen seafood medley (calamari, mussels, shrimp, scallops), defrosted in cold water
• 1 - 6 oz. can Bumble Bee Fancy Lump Crabmeat, drained and rinsed with cold water
• 1 - 8 oz. can Bumble Bee Fancy Whole Oysters, undrained

Melt the butter in a medium pot.  Add the onions, garlic, celery leaves, some kosher salt and white pepper, and cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent.  Add the tomatoes, seafood stock, bay leaves, basil, parsley, thyme, oregano, granulated garlic, sugar, and wine.  Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat so the soup simmers, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Transfer the soup to a crockpot.  Cover and cook on low for an hour and a half.  Stir several times during the cooking, and after the first hour, taste and re-season if necessary.  Stir in the shrimp and seafood medley, cover and cook on low another 15 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and firm.  Add the crabmeat and oysters, cover the crockpot and then turn it off.  Let it stay covered another 15 minutes, so that the crabmeat and oysters warm through.  Serve with garlic bread.

I've Got a Little List - Backpacker Brownies

Friday, Day 3 - Who knew that morning TV was so darn awful?  I like to watch the news, but our local channel, News 13, is one long advertisement for personal injury attorneys imploring you to beware of insurance company attorneys, broken up by short news stories that repeat over and over again.  The weather takes longer than the news.  One growl and two yawns for that bit of programming.

And who watches eight episodes in a row - that's four freaking hours - of "Sex and the City" first thing in the morning?  Ewwwwww ...

I admit it could be a lot worse - I could be sitting in court at this very minute, trying to manage the 18 witnesses I had to subpoena two weeks ago, for three different trials set for "cattle call" at the same time.  Not the way I am accustomed to doing things, and while time-certain trials are not a perfect scheduling device either, at least I successfully managed to avoid pissing off the entire medical and therapeutic community.  Maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit.  Literary license. What I am not exaggerating is my back pain, coupled with Insane Itching in my left hand and foot.  This is slowing down my dishwashing progress, while speeding up my coffee-drinking and web-surfing.  I am surfing for seafood soup recipes, and I think I found what I am looking for, which is coincidentally what Cory requested in lieu of dill pickle soup.  I love that dill pickle soup, but it would not be his first choice on a soup and salad bar.

I already have several items on my cooking list, so what's one more? Backpacker Brownies, beef empanadas, hamantaschen, and now, cioppino, the San Francisco seafood treat.  I am going to take my time - what else have I got? - so that I don't stand in one spot for too long and aggravate my already aggravated little body.  Growing old sucks and so does CPS.  Some of my cooking plans will require a trip to Walmart, so I may have to start with the brownies.  (Everybody all together now: awwwwww ...)

The dishwasher is swooshing, and the Backpacker Brownies are in the oven.  It smells good in here.

Speaking of lists, I've got all of my PCP-recommended appointments set, which impressed even me.  I so impressed myself, I am going to add my dentist to the call list.

The news, when I bother to watch it, is depressing.  The Prez is in a pissing match with Bibi, and my money is on the Bibster.  The media is still picking on Hillary.  Dr. Ben Carson, who I have liked in the past, has publicly lost his mind.  He announced that homosexuality must be a choice, because straight men go into prison, and their experiences there turn them gay. (All of my gay family and friends, this would be a good time to let out a big, collective "aw, jeez ...")  Harrison Ford, my all-time favorite actor, crash-landed yesterday.  Fortunately he landed on a golf course, and there were several doctors immediately on site to help him.  That's not a Doctor Joke, that's the truth.  It won't stop snowing up north.  That's why we call it global warming.  That's a joke.  And I'm off to Walmart.

Those Backpacker Brownies, which are inspired by Camilla Saulsbury's awesome Ultimate Shortcut Cookie Book, are like a Chunky Bar on speed. Chocolate, fruit, nuts, chocolate, oats, chocolate ... did I mention chocolate?  So here is the recipe, and a picture.   Drooling is optional.

1 - regular size package brownie mix
3 extra-large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1/3 cup half-and-half

1 1/3 cup quick cooking oats (not instant), divided
1 1/2 cup lightly salted mixed nuts (I make my own snacking mixture: roasted pecans, cashews, pistachios, and peanuts), coarsely chopped, divided
1 cup dried cranberries and/or raisins
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I combined 1 cup chocolate +1/2 cup butterscotch chips), divided

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch baking pan with non-stick spray.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the brownie mix, eggs, oil, and half-and-half.  Mix with a wooden spoon just until all of the dry ingredients are moistened.  Stir in 1 cup of the oats, 1 cup of the chip, 1 cup of the nuts, and all of the dried fruit.  Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the top with the remaining oats, nuts, fruit, and chips.  Bake for 28 to 30 minutes until the brownies are firm and the edges have started to pull away from the sides of the pan.  Let cool completely on a rack before cutting.

I did not cut these myself, as they were intended as a hostess gift, and they are already on their way to the intended reipients.  I think I would remove them from the pan, place them on a large cutting board, and cut them with a long serrated knife, like a bread knife.

Something possessed me to do my shopping at the St. Cloud Walmart. The good news is that I actually found several pairs of slacks that should hopefully fit me.  The bad news is that I could not find some of the major ingredients for the cioppino, including items I normally find in Walmart. The other good news is that I found other stuff, like spinach and feta popcorn chips (very good) and unwrapped white chocolate Kit Kat minis. Also canned baby whole clams, canned whole oysters, crawfish tails, a rather handsome corned beef brisket for hash, and the ground beef for the empanadas.  So I have ideas and I have options, based on the content of my freezer and pantry.  I also have time to do more shopping elsewhere, as Cory will be gone all day tomorrow and the cioppino won't be needed until Sunday evening.

The Magic won tonight, but not before I became emotional and used language that would blister paint off the side of a barn. Well worth the spike in blood pressure.  Go Magic!