All I wanted to do was take a picture of my sister’s car, which had been taking up prime real estate in the driveway. She’d had the For Sale sign on it for months, taken it down for a potential buyer, but then replaced it when that buyer fell through.

The Stars of the Show

Now that she had a new job, I wanted her to advertise to her colleagues that a reliable, inexpensive preowned car was for sale. After all, most preowned cars have dramatically risen in price, not necessarily in value, since the pandemic. Supply chain issues not only halted the production of new cars, but delayed the production of car parts for repairs.

Big Mama

As I reached the front door to enter the house after taking a picture of the car, I heard the unmistakable mewling of kittens, coming from the direction of the patio. No feral kittens in sight. Following the sound to the hibachi grill, I carefully lifted the heavy black tarp. An adult cat bolted, leaving five kittens.

After taking their picture, I gently replaced the tarp, made eye contact with the mother cat and entered the house. Looking out from the glass patio door, I watched the cat carry her kittens one by one to secret them somewhere in the neighbor’s yard.

The next day, I thought about those kitties when the bottom fell out, flooding in some places. They would have been sopping wet had they stayed under the hibachi grill tarp. I could only hope that they were in a warm, dry place during the storm.

Whoever survives will be the next generation of hardy feral cats. Even though we don’t feed them, those cats are probably the reason I’ve hardly seen a squirrel or other critters around here. In other words, those kittens will have plenty to eat if they make it out of infancy.

A bout of being overly cerebral caused me to experience three strange dreams within a five-day period.

During my waking hours, I pack as much productivity into my day as possible. If I focus on one thing to completion, I’d complete that one thing faster, but rarely does my schedule afford me the luxury of doing that unless I’m bumping up against a deadline. Without a firm deadline, I juggle various projects throughout the day.

One new project is finding a supported group home for my nephew. Although he’s a high-functioning person with autism, he’s not maturing as he should because he’s only ever lived with his grandparents or his mother. If things continue like this, his grandparents, parent, aunts, uncles will be deceased and he’d be as lost as a child despite the fact that he’s currently in his 30s.

I’ve clocked several hours, taking detailed notes while watching webinars and summarizing PDFs for the past couple of weeks. So much so, that the accumulated research seeped into my dreams.

I frantically ran around in my dream, searching for a periodical table to prepare for an exam. It’s been years since I’ve had to prepare for an exam, much less teach a science class.

Dream Interpretation: organizing information to prepare for a transformation or to clean up a messy situation.

That’s precisely what I’m attempting to do. Make sense of which services my nephew qualifies for while simultaneously helping him organize his life.

The next night, in a continuation of an educational theme, I dreamed that I was attending a graduation. Several wooden folding chairs had one of my friend’s names written on it. Someone informed me that my friend had donated money for those chairs.

Dream Interpretation: dreaming about several chairs means that someone is about to be rewarded for doing good work.

That tracked since my friend is a dedicated mother, teacher and yoga instructor who also conducts antiracism workshops for other white women. That last part may sound counterintuitive, but in order to have real conversations about race, white women need to first say the quiet part out loud, which may be traumatizing to hear for people of color. The goal is to help other white women first work on themselves before they reach across the racial aisle to continue antiracism work.

In perhaps the sweetest dream, I was socializing with a group of people who were calm, gentle and all around lovely. Even as I interacted with them, I felt that their mannerisms reminded me of sheep. Never thought that “sheeple” could have a positive connotation. I’m sure these were shapeshifters because I’m currently binge-watching “True Blood.” Among other series.

Dream Interpretation: dreaming of sheep indicates comfort, dreaming and heightened expectations.

I can only credit that feel-good dream to my dance classes, of which I take at least two a week. Don’t know how much longer I have it in me for such a strenuous workout, but I’m going to attend until my body tells me “no.” Just like I did with capoeira.

I’m sure my dreams will take a sharp, anxiety-filled turn in the next week: Dad’s long-awaited return. That one change will trigger a cornucopia of changes.

My parents’ 62nd anniversary fell on a Saturday, which meant we could have a celebration dinner during the day on the actual day. Like every other celebration since mid-April, we reserved the setting room down the hall from Dad’s rehab room, pushed the tables together and laid out the spread: fried chicken, pulled pork, hush puppies, cole slaw, baked beans, fried fish and a gallon of Arnold Palmer. My pescatarian sister and her husband had a mushroom and cheese pizza and my vegan niece had a tempeh sub.

With all that food, we STILL forgot to bring a dessert. Actually, I knew I’d eat dessert at the second event for the day at a barbecue. Besides, none of us needed to tempt diabetes.

The Happy Couple

Although Dad appreciated the effort to be together with family, especially his out-of-town daughter and her family, he was ready to return to his room soon after. More concerning, Dad either had no energy or no motivation to maneuver his wheelchair. Whether physiological or psychological, Dad regressed to being pushed in his wheelchair rather than ambulating without assistance.

At the end of the month, the plan is to bring Dad home, which is what he’s wanted for months. The biggest concern for the rest of us is that he’s still not walking nor appearing to be stronger. Some of us optimistically think that once home, Dad will be so happy that he’ll regain motivation to walk again.

I hope so. As much as we’re preparing for his return, the accommodations won’t be anything like rehab. I cringe to think where his spirits will be if he has to return to rehab after a brief stint at home.

As much as I love to relax on the weekends and fully enjoy my unstructured time, I volunteered nearly three hours to help someone I care about with the manifestation of a crisis that she’s been surviving for over 32 years. It all began when she birthed a special needs child.

Not that her son’s autism was visible at birth. Even when it became apparent that he was “sensitive,” there still wasn’t a specific diagnosis, which would have been coupled with age-appropriate treatment and interventions at school. As a matter of fact, she herself could have had a support group outside of her own family with other parents of children with autism.

Presently, after more than three decades of being a single mom of a child with autism, the challenge shows in a car and home that are filled to the brim with things. At first blush, I’d call all of it “junk,” but nearly everything has a story, a purpose, a reason for its contribution to the heap of things that I’d love to bag up indiscriminately and haul off either to Goodwill or the landfill. The real mantra in this case is: Donate, Organize, Recycle, or Trash.

Yet, I asked as neutrally as possible if she still wanted certain things, small bags of which were the remains of art projects. For all of those, we concluded that the best course of action would be to set them all aside for her to consolidate the contents.

Another solid decision was to bag up the piles of clothing that she and her son could no longer wear. That cleared a remarkably amount of precious floor space.

In the end, we took three carloads to Goodwill and filled her home recycling and trash bins. At the same time, we’d only removed just one layer of stuff, still not accomplishing the goal of clearing her living room by shifting all that stuff that would be retained and organized to the spare bedroom, which also had been filled to the brim.

I offered to return the following Saturday with the goal of pulling all the books that I’d discovered during this first pass through. She expressed a strong desire to keep certain books, but admitted that many could be donated. She also stated that throughout the week, she’d go through all the “mail” that was kept in bags, a crude filing system.

Other bags of paper merely looked like junk mail, but since she’s an art teacher, everything could have eventually find a home in a future art project. Fortunately, most of it found its way into the recycling bin.

After the last load of things were donated to Goodwill, we treated ourselves to a deluxe milkshake, followed by takeout from a Thai restaurant. Having dessert first is a good way to celebrate.

The next day, I treated myself to a mani pedi, which felt more luxurious than previous trips to the nail salon.

For the 82nd continuous Strange family reunion, we celebrated our second freeborn generation. Our theme was “Back Down Memory Lane.” With help from extended family, I created a presentation with pictures, facts, and anecdotes about each honoree.

The 12 Honorees

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AgxqBwvGu4qmgRGU0E_u15k6anfd

Click on the link above, then click on “Download.”

Click on the downloaded powerpoint file to open.

Click on the full screen icon found in the lower right side to automate the slideshow with audio.