Small Consolations

Some extraordinarily cute pictures of the litter I foster, at the moment...

Winter is long over in this corner of the world, and the kittens rush me madly into spring. My little tailspin recently translated to the gastro problems that I associate purely with PTSD. I carved out 2 hours to relax yesterday, and took these pictures whilst relaxing.

I, and the unicorn meat eating cats, have to take a break on the fostering, after this litter. It has done me a world of good, but Georgia is not so thrilled. She is not timid with people, but other cats, as she is small. I don't want her to start plucking her fur out.

It is a season for gastro problems for anyone: Gun control, bombings in Boston, and now a fertilizer plant has exploded in Waco, Texas.

Of course, I am in the mix, I voice my opinion on all these topics and more. I protest, sign petitions, foster, blog...whatever I can do to raise my voice. But today, here on this page, my diagnoses demands that I retreat to this very early time in the morning to get some peace.

That my sleep is disturbed, is another problem I face today. It's been a while since I woke up this early. My sleep schedule is enormously important to me, and helps keep me stable. But the instability matches my foreboding of a change in my living environment. I am not moving, but a relationship with a housemate is changing. And if I think about that, my stomach starts to cramp.

When I retreat to Facebook, I run into some heavy hitters among my Facebook friends, that are against gun control, in an exceedingly vitriolic way. Their comments that demonstrate that they are among the fringe element, that equates not selling semi-automatics to ex-felons with slavery, and a removal of rights.

Whatever.

So I  retreat here to the world I can control.

I have to put my anger against the Senators that killed the gun control bill yesterday. I have to lay down my hatred of the weasels who don't walk past a darkened, empty, child's bedroom every night. I have to release my scorn of the rest of the people on the Hill, who haven't been shot yet.

 I must somehow find a way out of the paranoia engendered by the ticketing of 2 women, who simply yelled, "Shame on you" at the Senate yesterday, when the bill was defeated. 1 of them had actually wrested the magazine clip from Jared Loughner, ending his shooting spree in Tucson, AZ.

Apparently, protestors are more dangerous to the members of Congress than a violent person with an easily obtained semi-automatic.

ENOUGH.

Ratty has already gone to hunt unicorns moving north. It's misty and warm outside, with the temperature expected to be very spring-like this week, mid-60's on Fahrenheit. Max is sleeping peacefully and snoring. He, too, needed some extra love last night, after the kittens planted their flag on the bed. Georgia is not the only insecure animal in my home. Although Max covers it quite well, (he is a bully boy,) he has trust issues that come with being a rescue.

The green mists that I wrote for weeks of, has finally settled on the trees. Every year I forget how many differing hues of green that there will be. As always, I am delightfully surprised by the variety. I am sure some paint store has named them all, but I don't know the words for the multiplicity of greens that exist right now. The redbuds are in full swing as well, and here and there, surviving dogwoods blossom. I do miss the old House, and the fields surrounding it. With a small greenway now in my backyard, I miss looking out onto endless fields, sunlight reaching all parts of the forests.

I miss living on a hill, and the ability to search for miles for the tree flowers, below. The dappled sunlight, pie-eyed as a cow, to paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins. Surely his spring poems are the loveliest, and I will leave you with one here.

Pied Beauty

  by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things--
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                     Praise Him.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15840#sthash.qpBQHEQE.dpuf