Inessential Stuff

Big and big-boned. Patient. Slow-moving. Tolerant even when toddlers pulled on his tail. And sporting the world’s longest, most splendid whiskers. A perfect lap cat. Not pushy. But always glad to accommodate an empty lap. Easy-going. And, in the right situations, given to spectacular love attacks: glassy eyed, purring, rolling around, when thisclose was not close enough, reaching some level of ecstatic bliss only he knew. With an epithet of “Big Fat”, on account of his size. But mostly on account of all that loving. Big Fat Cello. A very fine cat. 1994-2010.

It started with a modest 70 cars.  The next year featured over 500 cars.  But this year, well, this year topped them all.  Over 1000 cars raced in a thrilling, competitive fury to see who would be crowned the Fastest Car in the Third Annual Hot Wheels Extravaganza!

The track was constructed and carefully calibrated, and the cars were ready to race.

And in the end, one car stood above all others.  Was it a Track Star?  A car on FTE wheels?  An Acceleracer?  Maybe last year’s winner?  No indeed (though last year’s winners all finished in the Top Ten).  The winner of the Third Annual Hot Wheels Extravaganza was none other than  . . . (ready for it?) . . . the RD-10 Ace Racer.  I know!  It’s super exciting!

I take pictures here and there all the time–at Marcus’ t-ball games, on the way back from weddings, on photoshoots. It gets to be an odd assortment of photographs that aren’t easy to categorize and, therefore, don’t usually end up in a gallery on my blog. So I decided to lump them all together into a category of their own, and here they are. Will notice a rural theme, and an acute interest in hay bales.

All pet owners think their pets are the most marvelous in the world,  and pet stories can be insufferable.  Cat owners, it seems, can be the worst.

In spite of this, I want to mention Sula today, on the day she died.  I’ve owned 7 cats in my lifetime, but Sula stands alone.  Tortoiseshell.  Yellow-green eyes, always bright and alert.  Quick and agile.  Difficult to photograph, for she was always on the move.  When we first got her, she could sleep in our palm, and she never grew very big.

She was nothing but energy.

We planned on her being an indoor cat.  But Sula literally ripped the carpet to shreds by the doorway.  When we compromised and let her out on our second story deck,  she promptly leaped off.  With a log leaned against the deck and the sliding door open a crack, would come and go as she pleased (to the envy and amazement of our other cats).

She would bring shrew moles and field mice–and once an unidentified larger rodent–into the apartment, alive and well.  Then she’d sit and watch her home-bound cat-mates play with them.  She also brought home a snake once.  But mostly shrew moles.  Lots and lots of them.  The birds she caught, however, she wouldn’t share.

We had her spayed twice.  The unsuspecting veterinarians missed the 3rd and 4th ovaries during the first procedure.   It seemed fitting:  nothing halfway for Sula.  Everything in extreme.

She had a loud meow, which saved her once when, gone for three days, I searched for her and tracked her down by her Siamese-esque mraaows; she had entered an empty house that was for sale, and needed out.

In spite of her small size, she was feisty.  When she was feeling generous, she would let me hold her, for as long as 30 seconds.  Otherwise, no one held Sula.  And she would fight those who tried.  Her medical chart at the vet was marked with dozens of fluorescent “Will Bite!” stickers.  We were often called back to retrieve her from her kennel, which we did with plenty of towels.

Later, we moved to the forest in the mountains of Arizona, and those were the salad days.  Sula roamed as she pleased, and would sometimes be gone for a few days at a time, then come home and sleep for 24 hours straight.  She liked to sleep in the sink.  Or on top of the refrigerator, where the other cats couldn’t reach.

She kept the neighbor’s husky dog at bay.  She’d puff up her fur, turn to the side, look as ferocious as possible, and the dog would slowly back away.

She purred loudly.  She hissed loudly.  Hissing, in fact, was her preferred form of communication.  It didn’t mean she didn’t like you–she might rub against your leg, purring, but hissing, too.  Just to let you know that this was on her terms.

Her thyroid went crazy 6 years ago.  She went through radioactive iodine treatment.  During the screen x-rays, they discovered that she was riddled with bird-shot.  She was radioactive for a month.

I think the best day in her life was the day she came too close to a Stellar Jay’s nest, and the Stellar Jay dove at Sula, repeatedly, and each time, Sula made acrobatic leaps into the air, fascinated by this new game, even if it didn’t end with a meal.

She preferred yogurt, actually, to just about anything.  And if we wanted to go to bed and couldn’t find her outside, opening a yogurt container, as loudly as possible, often brought her running home.

When the radiologist said that 5% of animals have recurrences of hyperthyroidism, I was almost certain that would include Sula.  She never went halfway.  And so it returned.  Furiously.  Medication staved off the inevitable as long as possible.

It was a good day for Sula.  She spent most of it outside.  She’s too small and weak to fend off the neighbor cats now–less than 5 pounds–and she walks with a hitch in her step, but together we chased away the pesky cat that has been hanging around the driveway.

She had some yogurt, then spent some more time on the porch, where I scratched her favorite spot on her neck and she meowed, louder than ever in her partial deafness.

She was feisty at the vet, growling and looking for fingers to bite, but it mostly seemed for show.  Still, the veterinarian was appreciative:  “Sula to the very end,” he said.

Indeed.

One thing Marcus loves is to go to the airport and watch the planes land.  So when we went last week, I took my camera long.  Mostly I was playing around with my new lens, but I thought some of the pictures were kind of cool.

Okay, so this gets a little confusing.  Ready?

I have created a new blog.  It’s called “Essential Stuff”.  It’s for my professional shots and thoughts.  It is also has its own domain.  Unfortunately, the one I wanted was taken (you can probably guess what it is), so we’re stuck with this:  www.LarryBrunt.com.  But don’t be disappointed.  To recap (I know, it’s confusing): www.LarryBrunt.com is the place for “Essential Stuff”.  Here’s a sneak peak:

You’ll notice (if you did sneak a peak) that it has a similar look and feel, only bigger . . . and whiter.

“Inessential Stuff” will continue featuring, as it primarily has in the past, my personal stuff.

At Christmas, when we went to DisneyLand, we could have set the record.  It was that empty.  We went on Christmas Eve, and it was drizzly, and there were very few people there, relatively speaking.  There was absolutely no line for Space Mountain.  We could have set the record.

Could have.  But, with a 1 year old, 4 year old, and 5 year old, Space Mountain wasn’t really much of an option.  Dumbo was.  We did Dumbo.

Anyway, we did, however, hit stop-and-go traffic out of Anaheim to Riverside.  So what does one do, while a passenger in the front seat, in stop-and-go-traffic?  Mess around with pictures, of course.  And here are the results.  (No thumbs, but only six images–sort of an evolution of goofing off.)

In what is now a tradition, I oversaw a massive race of all my Hot Wheels cars this last summer.  I did this while Marcus was overseas, which gives me full-run of the house, and more importantly, the track.  Setting up the track always requires careful calibration (I spent about 11 hours initially making the track–then many more hours making repairs).  I had over 550 cars race (cars on Real Rider tires didn’t compete).  The racing was fast; the picture below of a wicked corner was taken at 1/320th of a second.

I know. The suspense is killing you: What kind of car won? A Track Star? A car on FTE’s? A 1980′s Ultra Hot? An Ace Racer?

Wonder no more. Here are the champions: 1st: the 2005 Phastasm on FTE wheels. 2nd: 2006 Pocket Bikester on FTE’s. 3rd: 2006 Carbide, special Holiday Hotrod.

It used to be, at family gatherings, no one spoke more than Grandpa. He told endless stories—stories of how books, and minerals, and southwestern paintings had come into his possession. He got a good deal on each one of them, and one day they would make him a lot of money, and each one had a story. He would punctuate his stories with demands of Grandma.

She was always obliging, getting his sweater for him, or a new fork, or the wallet from his jacket, while always the hostess to everyone around her: offering large portions of mashed potatoes and peanut butter loaf, offering seconds, even thirds, and moving around the room making sure everyone had been handed a plate of pie with whipped cream.

Things are different now. Now, at family gatherings, Grandma and Grandpa are set up in chairs with blankets, and rarely move.

Grandpa is blind and his heart is failing and now he rarely speaks. He just listens to the sounds in the room: his son telling his daughter a story; the sound of dirty dishes being placed in the sink, the TV babbling in the background, and his grandchildren making jokes, and his great-grandchildren playing, especially them.

Grandma has slipped into dementia. She has forgotten how to cook, forgets to eat, forgets to take her medicine. No longer required to do Grandpa’s errands, and not quite sure of where she is, she just sits and watches all the people in the room. But she is ever the hostess, ever gracious, making sure the people in front of her have eaten, even if she can’t serve them or recognize who they are.

And now Grandma and Grandpa do something that they never did before. Amid the babies crying, the competing conversations, the children yelling and chasing each other around the sofa—amid all this noise and confusion, they turn their faces toward each other—him with no vision, her with no clarity—and they hold each other’s hand.

(Please click on the image for full-screen)

This last Saturday, I had the honor of providing photographic coverage of a conference in Spokane put on by the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation and the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation. The conference was called “Surgical Advances in Parkinson’s Disease” and featured presentations by four experts in the field, as well as a question and answer panel.

Above, from left to right, are Sierra Farris, MPAS, Monique Giroux, MD, both from the Booth Gardner Parkinson’s Care Center, and Jaimie Henderson, MD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

A video of the symposium will be available online at the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation website.  As a non-profit, the organization is always appreciative of contributions. The promising research towards making life with Parkinson’s more symptom-free is certainly worth it.