Summary of Sirius' Death

 Sirius, my son's dog, died on the 10th. I was gutted that day. I'd already had a couple tough phone calls come in while I wasn't fully awake nor fully cognizant, missed one from the Mercy Clinc (who STILL hasn't called me back from that return call, and I'll have to call again). Then, after the most vexing call by a half hour to an hour Sirius had a huge seizure on the bed I arranged for him on the floor by my bed. I think he passed away during the seizure as he very suddenly stopped seizing, his tail raised, and I had a log to clean up. I couldn't find any pulse or tell if he was breathing. I kept trying... and I even got help to verify what I thought was the case.

I had to recover a bit before I could go to my MRI appointment. He was too stiff to arrange in a more comfortable posture so I had to leave him there on his bed. I had expected my scans to allow me to be home in plenty of time to be back before he got back. I ended up having my low back, mid back, brain without contrast, and brain with contrast. So, I wasn't able to beat him back home.

It was quite awhile before we could get it together enough to get him shrouded in the bags I'd been able to get. I thought I'd grabbed lawn-sized bags. They were not. So we had to get creative.

I have had to leave a message with the crematorium we use for our pets. I've not gotten any return calls. It wasn't until yesterday that we managed to get him over to the local animal hospital to their freezer, since our big freezer is already winter stocked with no room. So we will be paying the transport fee on top of the other fees, which is fine. I don't know how much the total is going to be with no callbacks to arrange payment of all fees.

My son and I are ok, but it is a little hard as literally everywhere we look there is something that reminds us of him. Most of his bedding is washed up to prevent cats from peeing in my room. I have two boxes of dog treats, one of which has large sized ones. If I'd known how soon he would be leaving, I would have been giving him the full treat instead of splitting them per yard trip. I'd have had Merlin lift him up onto one of our beds instead of the big nest we'd made him. His arthritis had been making up and down very difficult for him.

Book Review: Mystic Teat

Mystic Tea by Rea Nolan Martin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I greatly enjoyed this book. To me this is a three main-pronged braided storyline. We follow a “Mother Superior” of a convent who is also the current caretaker of her mentor, the previous Mother Superior, who in turn had served directly under and was mentored by the founder of their Order. Then we also follow the growth stories of two young women who are of vastly different background being called (unknowingly by them) to fill the roles of those two women. One of these women had never before considered becoming a nun and only went to the convent because while she was in jail getting sober she received a divine angelic calling/revelation. This young woman also happened to be an unknowing seer, having chalked everything up to drug induced hallucinations her entire life. The other woman was a twin that had absorbed her sister in utero, but grew up with the spirit of her sister stuck to her. Then we come to a fourth plot, the growth of the order itself. There is also a fifth plot, the growth of the individual aged remaining handful of nuns.

As a person whose skeleton has shown evidence of having absorbed a twin, I can relate with that character, although I did not become the religious zealot of a nun she was at the point of meeting the character. I was granted a firm support network whereas she was not. I also found myself identifying with our current on-paper Mother Superior, being a biological mother and a matriarch for my tiny branch of my main family. With similar responsibilities it is an extremely easy thing to do. And yet I also found myself identifying with our untaught seer, since I also would speak to rivers, although it was more often trees where I grew up, and found myself experiencing an interest amount of luck.


I found this to be a liberating tale. I rode the highs and lows of the characters and grumbled at them when they dug their heels on things that they needed to come to grips with. I loved the amount of simple life magic, the angels being a real thing, the transcendence (literal) within the tale. I think this would actually be very deserving a tale to be taken into high school senior English classes for reading and discussion. The religious tone, despite being such an obvious part of the story, also clearly separates the religious from the spiritual… a discussion that needs to be had with young men and women at the point in time that they are figuring themselves out and getting ready to set off on their own foray into adulthood and what it means to be human.



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