yaaaaaay!!!!

photo by krystal kozak

penny got a good report from the kindly veterinarian!! her blood count is back to normal!! sometimes, i read two wks ago when they initially diagnosed penny the pup, thrombocytopenia can be cured, if treated early... i cautiously announce that it looks like penny is cured!! she will take her meds & wear the "cone of shame" for one more week, then we should have a healthy pup to play with & run with & love w/o worry we will hurt her or she will bleed... it's a miracle!! or merely univeral randomness...
nice just now to send a message to ALL of our facebook friends who reside on the mountain: i scrolled through ALL of our fb friends & realized 1) many are no longer living, tho their profiles are; 2) judging from avatars, many people's lives/appearances/conditions have changed since i last saw them; 3) we know many, many good people.  i was happy to "remember" so many (it's impossible to keep up reguarly w/all fb friends when we have so many, not bc we're so important, but just bc fb users can amass many "friends"!!). :) so this was cool: i ended up sending the message to locals to 46 people!! we have many local friends, & that feels nice!
here is a pic krystal took from wed at shenanigan's (thank you!), one of the only where i don't have a double chin. i thought i was losing weight!! my chin doesn't seem to know that... need to do more face exercises. been slacking, & it shows!! it was a fun night, tho my new fabulous amp cut out TWO TIMES!!! and my shoes totally broke!! argggghh!!!! i am learning that platform shoes w/petroleum soles have a shelf life much less than one decade!! the shoes actually were disintegrating under my feet as i tried to play... so i ended up barefoot, feeling like a midget. argh!
on another topic, if you have age/liver spots, i successfully have completed a trial on your behalf  (you're welcome) :) & now can announce a cheap remedy: WART CREAM!! that's right, tell your friends. you apply it thickly to ONLY the discolored skin. it will burn some. let it dry (about 1-2 hours). peel off the white film that has formed. then wait a week & be brave. your skin in those patches will turn black; it's a healing burn! then, if you're patient (or scrub your face every day to speed the process, as i did), the scab will fall off & your spot will be gone, or mostly gone... remember to put a dab of lotion or petro jelly on the spots if they start to get too scabby bc you don't want them to scar...
i've developed many age spots due to fatty liver/heredity/sun exposure... the four i tested this method on are now mostly gone! amazing! this after 15 yrs of seeing the spots develop & grow! when i was wealthy living in bakersfield, i would go to a foofoo aesthetician & have my face lasered at great expense. this cheap home remedy actually worked better, tho took longer to see results!
so instead of spending 100s or even 1000s, you can spend $5 on a tube of wart cream or gel & improve your complexion. :D (or you can be like mama, who sees her liver spots as being "like mama" (grandma mary)... and now i feel guilty for being so vain... oh well; what's new.)
ok, that's if for now... if you want to go to our yard sale, please contact me for the address. i hope we sell a lot of stuff!!

??

- don't know what happened to old format of this blog, but it's gone. on the old format, many of the links to other sites were no longer working, anyhow, so spose it's just as well...
- just blogging because. penny petunia puppy page is recuperating nicely. she just licked my heel. fatso the gorgeous cat this morn even jumped on the bed with penny & me, tho as far from the dog as he physically could be while still resting on the same furniture piece.
- i missed long beach bayou festival to take care of penny. i really wanted to play since new orleans piano stylings are some of my favorites, but believe i made the right decision. instead, spent much quality time with dear & not-so-dear family & dear cousins visiting from tx. ate a bunch of great mama ramona & mama roomba's (restaurant) food & smith's cookies & drove all over bakingfield & took penny to petsmart, where they removed her stubborn surgical bandage gratis (it was melted to her fur due to the summer heat & she cried pitifully when james & i tried to remove it before he took off for the southland & he halted the operation & then i worried & worried she would die of infection bc i couldn't remove the bandage bc i couldn't bear to hear her cry)... don't have much more to say except we have nice plans for my sobriety bd, family may animal-sit, & this house is super, super clean due to absence of mister wonderful, my husband, who, were he in the peanuts comic strip, would be pigpen. (that is, if pigpen also were the most charismatic, good-looking, & talented peanuts character.)  i miss him, my darling infuriating dear dear partner.
- life for now is pretty darned good. reading many books, maybe will finish a one. the most interesting presently is the sleeper awakes by hg wells. the least interesting were the dog & cat books i returned to the library.
- in music happenings, friday is frank fairfield at union station, then the paladins at don the beachcomber. you can look them up, if you're interested; we hope to go to both. sat & sun we have yard sale. then will be sobriety bd trip w/music, friends, cool weather, & for me, i hope, a chip.
- the silly roosters are crowing away in the hills across the road. it's hot outside, but the gusts blow cool mountain breezes through the house. really nice. peaceful. happy happy to you. for me, naptime. summer is awesome...

look at that happy smile! mr handsome & dear friend mark liddell, a real gentleman

little angie & little mary reveal in their common pose a genuine, innocent mien

our cousin tushi has inherited her mom's crowd-gathering & hilarious storytelling skill.

just found out our little dog has a disease called thrombocytopenia. feel better knowing what's wrong, as is always the case. little worse than the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling (except having no shoes at all). she will be boarded & in vet care for 7-10 days. after that, we'll bring her home & love her to pieces. so grateful i still have my 1st penny so that our little dog penny may be treated. sister angie, saint of pets, said we should enjoy her for as long as we can, so we will. love, jny (& james)

redwood room

photo by krystal k

hoppin' weekend for wbj

i stayed home from oc mktplace because it's a guitar competition, & what if i hit a clam while anthony's soloing? also, i need to keep eyes on bad kitty & hyper doggy. they actually were coexisting earlier, cat on table, dog beneath. tonight is sue's tavern, i'll be there, tomorrow's redwood room, i'll be there. hope steve will back me on my "manuel" song, which i think i'll play.
beautiful day here. windy. sleepy weather. just tipped over one of james's creations & spooked myself: it's a grimacing, bumpy, painted styrofoam head with mick jagger lips, containing glass eyes & a mold of james's own teeth, glued atop a styrofoam brick tower.

i tell ya: that guy!
this appeared in this wk's local paper. i didn't really write the article you see here; the editor did us a solid.

"we graduated!!!"

that's what the sign says that the little girl holds. i just love these children. this is the first year i openly said, all the time, "i love you kids" -- and i DO! -- the first year i took on in loco parentis, my educating duty, with great honor & responsibility.
today was the last day of school. the boy on the right hugged me & said, "i'm gonna misss you!" my two bad boys said, "we're sorry, mrs page, for all the bad things we did. thank you for helping us." i got hugs, hugs, hugs. a lovely 8th grader foster girl who has been in my fine arts elective came in, tears streaming, & embraced me. i've never had so many kids & adults openly embrace me at school. it's a different thing: they show affection much more openly at this place. it's not weird; the school's so small -- the kids really see us as being like parents to them!
we had a staff ballgame (i didn't play), & then, when the kids were bored, we went inside & had a contest to see who had gotten to know peers the best over the course of the year & i let the "winners" pick from the remnants of yesterday's class "store." they watched part of a movie. w/the whole school, they played in the water, including on a slip'n'slide teacher christy had brought. hilarious! then we had a pizza party & seven or eight parents showed up! i hugged them all, thanked them. we teachers lined up as the kids boarded the buses one last time & were told to put the bus windows down. as the buses pulled away, one of the aides sprayed buses & kids with the power hose. we teachers all laughed & waved goodbye. "are you crying?!?" christy said, & i said yes, i'm a cornball, wiping my eyes happily.
the kids gone, the school weirdly quiet & empty, we teachers threw water balloons at each other, then i was home.
here's pix i sent out yesterday to their parents. i wanna remember all of this, so i post it here:
Our final school activity involved me/rites of passage (no puberty rites, obviously... This is a 6th grd class in a public school). Most kids gave short speeches. One group did their own "graduation" ceremony, since kids don't graduate at our school til 8th grd. These are pix from after the ceremony, at which I delivered a short speech the girls wrote, they each gave a sentence to the class, I gave them "diplomas" they'd made, then everyone tossed their grad caps, which the girls had made from grocery bags. These pix, of an unnamed group of kids from a California school, show the joy of the moment. It was a wonderful time! Jnypg

dog musings

i think she is some combination of whippet-pharaoh hound-german shepherd-maybe even doberman... tho she acts like a border collie... she has gotten out now three of four times. she looks like a black bullet when she runs, like a track dog, but smaller, less hyperthyroidish. i got home from the drunk meeting, a kid from school yells, mrs page, you want a dog? and there across the road is penny's big round eyes & kangaroo ears peeping from the kid's sister's yellow car. (sister is the polite, pretty girl from the pizza parlor bc this is a very small place & humans dovetail constantly.) they'd spent an hour trying to catch penny, who, they said, just kept "running up and down the road, almost getting hit by cars." they had to stop traffic so that penny wouldn't get killed. "she even ran down that road, mrs page!" the boy said, pointing to a very steep road to the south that leads down into the local "holler."
penny is an intelligent dog, but she young & frightened. they went home & got a collar, then  finally coaxed her into their car with treats. after that, they didn't know what to do, so they were trying to give her away. dumbass me hasn't yet put a collar on penny.
at the moment i coulda lost her, i drove up & saw the whole scene. the neighbor was out, too, the fellow across the road whom i rarely see, as well as a local woman, looking worried or maybe judgmental or maybe neutral & i'm projecting, just holding her little dog & watching watching watching.
after all my thank yous & mea culpas, i was just too embarrassed to take penny out for our first walk. so now we're hiding in the house, the shame of the neighborhood...
yes, she has learned to jump the fence, and, as joe neighbor said, "once they learn that, there's no stoppin' em." my heart is in my shoes; he's right, of course.
family suggests dog run; shaded kennel, electric fence (tushi); keep her inside; call the dog whisperer. i am hungry & nervous. i haven't gotten to exercise since doggy came around. i am hungry & nervous & fat. i know all will calm down. she just has to get to know that this is now her home.
on the up side, peewee is sitting calmly, fatly only 10 feet from penny. after three days of tantrums (hiding, barfing under the bed and on my desk, trying to kill penny), he has seemed to be used to the hyper little creature. peewee is an awesome little guy, as is peeps the inside-outside man. he & penny pass by each other all the time w/o problem, two commuters on the subway. they've been around other animals; they know more about life than protected prince pee.
i think it's all gonna be ok.
time to eat something & not feel too fat about it.

stalling, stalling, stalling, keep them dishes stalling..

(sung, of course, to tune of "rawhide")
just realized i'm doing an old dance, doing just about any old thing so i don't have to start chores. blogging, of course, is one of those any old things...
news around the page front:
1. we now have a canine child! i named her penny for her copper-colored orbs. james fell in love at once, declaring she resembled a jackal, with her pointy snout & bat ears, but she is a sweet, not  predatory creature. she is so polite. i fear she was someone's pet, though she's not microchipped & bore no collar. was she abandoned, did she run away, or was she stolen? i'll never know unless "lost dog" photos of her appear on social media. until then, james emphatically announced, "she is our dog." he didn't want to go to his gig yesterday, even! (of course, he never does, at least initially...)
a homeless woman by the kern river in bakersfield gave penny to my cousin mitchell & his lovely girlfriend gabby yesterday morn as they walked their dogs along the river path. the woman said she could barely feed herself, let alone a dog (& puppy) she'd been trying to care for for a few weeks. they posted pix of the dogs on social media; the puppy immediately was adopted, but nervous penny, no. they feared they'd have to take her to the pound. i mentioned interest in seeing the dog, & one hour later, mitchell, gabbie, & cousin abi, she of the red mane & long legs, a brainy faux-brazilian, showed up here in frazier park with pup in tow. they must've left bako the minute i 'd said i'd like to see the dog!
now she is ours, & we are happy, but peewee the possessive kitty is not.
last night at 4 am, he barfed under the bed in protest. this morn, i swear he was trying to slide a rock off the desk to clobber the dog sleeping peacefully below. "they're like garfield & opie!" wrote cousin mary fafa. "they'll get used to each other," wrote cousin tushi in texas (she has many, many animal children, & should know).
2. we already had been adopted by a semi-feral cat, two weeks or so ago. he is vulpine in appearance, i think, more ancient-looking than adorable-plushy peewee of the foul temperament. i pretty much know, because it happens here a lot, that peeps the kitty was dumped off by someone. we live beside a dry arroyo, & one time in particular, i saw a car squeal away & an adorable, plump little dog go running, terrified, down the arroyo & out into the forest as i screamed, "puppy! stop! come back!" people who abandon their animals like that should be murdered. horrible, heartless pigs!!! that little dog, i fear, became a coyote's dinner. i still feel sad remembering it. :(
anyways, peeps came to us so clean, burr-free, smooth-coated, that i know someone must have abandoned him. those heartless pigs, however, left us with a good little kitty friend.
in short (as if i can express anything thusly), our animal family has grown by 200% in only weeks! animals are proof of god, to paraphrase my religious sister...
am so happy to have a dog, but last night, i dreamed about my gusgus, my beautiful, sweet, wonderful gusgus dog-bear-buffalo with the heart-melting gaze, whom i've not seen in 5 years & maybe never will see again. i dreamed i was holding him & smelling his doggy breath & drinking in those big brown eyes filled with love.
i also dreamed of picking up change laying all over the classroom floor (james leaves change everywhere; it just flies out of his pockets), the kids holding up pix of themselves as superheroes as they wore superhero costumes, then we're outside on an enormous tall-grassy field (one i dream about sometimes; it's near the sunny mountain homes of my subconscious), & i spread the sides of my coat/sweater & start flying, calling to the kids, "come on! try this! come on, kids!"
ok, well, i guess i have to go do the dishes now. (ps, i opened a yelp account & wrote this review of bro-&-sis's business as another stalling attempt. stop by the place, if you're in bakersfieldland. rescue grounds in bakersfield)

you can tell A LOT about a person by how they treat animals. :)

"who are you & what the hell are you doing here?!?!?!"

this sums it up: placid pup; psycho kitty stalking a bird he'll never catch because the screen is closed