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What? What? At Purdue? Dr. Who?

If you happen to be on Purdue’s campus this weekend, don’t be surprised if you see a big blue police box fade in to the  middle of the memorial mall. This weekend Purdue plays host to at HvZ invitational that will have university student players (both Human and Zombie)  visiting from as far away as Texas A&M (the only reason I know this is because the treasurer of the HvZ coordinating committee [or whatever it’s called] is one of my students 😉 )

Of course, depending on whether you’re a Zombie (don’t care about anything but brains and converting more Humans) or a Human (too busy trying NOT to become a Zombie), you may not notice.

It seems particularly apropos that the Doctor would be visiting this weekend, even if we don’t get to see him, given that the awards ceremony for this year’s local schools’ Science Fair will be held in the North Ballroom at Purdue Memorial Union.

Wish I thought the Doctor would take a break from the HvZ invitational and drop in to the Ballroom ~ now THAT would be a real award!  and I’m sure the Doctor would see that none of US were turned into Zombies . . .

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The things we do for love . . .

Ah, there’s really nothing like sitting on the lid of the toilet, listening to the washing machine wash and waiting for one of your kitties to have a poo so you can collect it and put it in a ziplock bag for the vet. He has his reasons, the vet, and good ones ~ making sure that neither of our kitties still has any parasites so they can grow and thrive ~ so I say give him all the poo he wants, and welcome!

Unfortunately, he doesn’t want it in job lots ~ he wants one from Hugo and one from Harlequin (which Jim got yesterday, so I suppose it’s my turn). Sigh.

Still, of all the unpleasant tasks I’ve been called upon to do, patiently waiting to collect some innocuous kitty poo hardly even makes the list.

And don’t worry I’m not going to list them for you (not today, anyway ;-))

But it does give one a bit of perspective, this. Compared to all the dirty job that Mike whatshisname does, for instance ~ and he does that (no I won’t say the word, I won’t ~ too easy) on purpose! ~ or the guy who rides a garbage truck for a living or the people who pump out septic tanks and work at sewerage plants or even just collect and clean those port-a-johns (some of them the same big tough guys that gag at changing a dirty diaper, am I right?) ~ compared to all that, this is nothing.

I wanted these kittens because I don’t have any babies little enough to want cuddling anymore (and no, girls ~ you know who you are ~ that is NOT an invitation) and since our last cat, Jake, passed a year ago, even though he and his brother weren’t lap cats by any stretch, they were affectionate in their way, and I’ve felt that loss keenly as time has gone by and the grief of Jake’s leaving softened.

Hugo ~ one of our Maine Coon mix kittensThing is, Hugo is anything but a lap kitty, too, though he’s only 6 months old and we’re hoping he grows out of that and becomes more so ~ he’s more interested in chasing the broom (which makes it very hard to sweep sometimes!) or chasing the yarn covered ball on the other end of Jim’s “cat-fishing” line or climbing the kitten tree in progress that Jim’s built/is building.

Harlequin, on the other hand, is every bit the cuddly kitty I was hoping for ~ but for the most part she’d rather cuddle with Jim, the little stinker (you figure out which one I’m talking about). I’m hoping she grows out of that, too ~ or at least into being more even-handed in bestowing her favors. ‘ Course, I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve spent most of my time with her cutting mats out of her hair or shoving meds down her throat ~ for which, I must say, she behaves very well (Hugo I have to wrap like a sausage in a bath towel).

Still, even if she is mostly imprinted on Jim, she has the affectionate personality I was Harlequin ~ one of our Maine Coon mix kittieslooking for and a sunshiny temperament “That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Despite a rough start (when we brought her home from the shelter she weighed less than 3 pounds ~ less than half what Hugo weighed ~ was still all over matted hair, had stitches from her spay in her shaved tummy) she has always rough housed with Hugo and played with such zest and joy that just to see the two of them playing soothes my soul even as I’m laughing.

I’d forgotten what it was like to have kittens, how much fun they can be. The two of them are going to be good sized kitties when they’re grown ~ she weighed in at 6.4 pounds last vet trip, and he at 7.7 ~ and that was at 5 months. And since they’re Maine Coon mixes, we have a long kitten-hood to look forward to ~ I’m completely content with that, and the long, healthy life they’ll have with us. If that means occasionally having to give them medicine or collect a sample of poo to be tested ~ no worries.

Honestly, I don’t mind ~ I just wish he’d get it over with already.

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A Gift of Love, Faith, and Belief ~ Jewels dropped from the abundance of the universe

It’s funny how the universe drops little jewels of joy and uplifting in the path of your life now and then, treasures unawares, if I might modify that phrase a bit.

I had several jewels dropped into my path today ~  sown last night, when we lent our car to one of my daughters, after she’d come out of work to find one of the tires on her car flat. Out of that less than positive happenstance, as with jewels taken from the dirt and stone in which they’re formed, came these three treasures ~

1.) I got to spend half an hour talking with Brigette about things that are important to us, as well as just chatting, when she picked me up on her way back to work so I could get my car;

2.) talking with her about the seminar I’m going to in Ontario this weekend and enumerating the ways that I know I’m meant to go to this seminar, helped to calm my heart and worries that the check I’m waiting for won’t come in time for us to go, and

3.) but, this, the most complex and multifaceted of the treasures I received takes longer to explain.

Brigette had left the radio on what I think was a christian station she listens to. The news program was interesting, but when I went to push the button to find out what station it was, I accidentally hit one of the programmed buttons instead, so I had to search through to find the station again ~ I’m not sure if I found the right one, because the newscast had just been ending when I hit the wrong button, and when I got back to a christian station, the second or third one the scanner stopped at, there was a young woman speaking about how she’d reached out to Jesus when she was 9 and felt him take her hand as she sat on the back of a horse. Of course the word “horse” caught my attention, and even though I’m not religious, I am a person of faith, and what little I’d heard touched my heart, so I continued to listen.

The young woman’s parents had died (I don’t know how) when she was only 9, and her life seemed to have crashed down around her and, just as my heart called out to my angels several months ago, in her grief and pain she had cried out the only name she knew, even though she’d only ever been to church once or twice in her life ~ Jesus. She said that in that moment she had felt him take her hand and he had never left her since.

As I drove to the store before I went home, I continued to listen, and it turned out that the young woman and her husband were guests on the radio show, which I later discovered was Focus on the Family. The couple’s names are Kim and Troy Meeder (I looked them up on the Focus On the Family website), and they are the founders, owners, operators of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch, in Bend, Oregon ~ where they have helped thousands of “broken” children find healing by working with the horses the Meeders have also rescued and helped to heal.

Listening to them talk about how they built Crystal Peaks from a plot of land that had been scraped raw and mined for cinders to spread on the roads, 8 acres of land that had no grass or trees or even dirt when they started (which was how they could afford it in the first place), I was struck by how obvious it was that, in healing that piece of land, they were learning patience, growing in faith and belief, and preparing themselves for the next great work of rescuing “broken” children and horses who, within that same love and belief, though they were unaware of it,  would help to heal each other.

It was a beautiful story, and one that speaks to me of the best uses of one’s faith. As I listened, there were points at which I felt the flush-and-goosebumps feeling that I associate with being in contact with the divine, whether you call it the cosmos, or the universe, or god, or the holy spirit ~ it is an in-flooding and an up-welling of love and belief that refreshes and re-energizes, as true love and belief always do.

It was a gift to me, carried on the joy in the voices of these two people as they talked about the children and horses they had brought together and helped to find healing.

It was one of the jewels dropped in my path today, and I wanted to share it, knowing that even in giving it to you, the gift stays with me still. For, as some of the oldest texts of faith, the Upanishads, tell us, the abundance of the universe cannot be reduced, no matter how much of it is taken or given away.

“From abundance he took (received) abundance ~ and still abundance remained.”

May you live and love in the abundance of divine energy that vibrates through and around us all.