SoapBoxVille 2.0 – Page 7 – Newer, Better, Stronger, More Mature

My Dad’s Dying & I’m Scared

July 31, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

I love this photo of dad with a circus clown, we go together every year

It’s almost 3am and I’m wide-awake and worried. My dad’s dying. Hopefully not tonight and hopefully not tomorrow, but dad’s dying. He has congestive heart failure, which he’s had for at least the last two years; maybe longer, I can’t remember. He had his first heart attack in 2003; he’s gotten progressively worse and gone from blockages and stents to congestive heart failure paired with kidney failure. He’s been getting weaker lately, even the blood transfusion he had a few weeks ago did nothing for the weakness. The upped dosage of Lasix hasn’t helped with the water weight gain and swollen feet. He’s not doing well. I’m scared. I’m afraid he won’t make it through the night. I can’t sleep because I’m afraid the phone will ring in the middle of the night.

At about twenty to eleven this evening I got a call from my sister-in-law telling me my brother was on his way over to my parents’ house because dad needed help getting up and in to bed. My brother has him settled in to his bed and as comfortable as he can be right now. If he makes it through the night and he’s not better by morning there will likely be another hospitalization.

So for tonight we wait and we wonder; is tonight the night, will he wake up better tomorrow like he sometimes does, will he be worse, is this another month in the hospital and rehab, is it time for him to move to a home, what will tomorrow bring?

With Outstretched Fingers, we Touched the Face of God

July 15, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Unedited photo of the almost full moon, September 7, 2014

With today’s fly by of the dwarf planet, Pluto we’ve now successfully visited every planet in our solar system. The New Horizons probe travelled more than 3 billion miles for more than nine years to visit, photograph, and collect data about our most distant planet. How incredible is that?

In April Stephen Hawking wrote this of the New Horizons mission, “The New Horizons pioneering, decade-long mission is to travel to the outer reaches of our solar system, in order that we can discover more about our most distant planet, Pluto, and the Kuiper belt in which it is located. This July, NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s New Horizons probe will fly by Pluto at 14km/s, using instruments to examine its atmosphere and surface and then transmit this information back 3 billion miles by X band for us to interpret and view. This would have been the subject of science fiction when I was at school, but is now science fact. I feel proud and honoured for such a momentous scientific mission to be completed within my lifetime, and plan to celebrate in my own way, with a Pluto party in July. My congratulations to everyone on the New Horizons team. With imagination and determination, it is humbling to see what we are capable of.”

Watching this morning’s NASA press briefing and reading Professor Hawkings’s words reminded me of President Bartlett’s monologue in the “West Wing” episode, The Crackpots and These Women.

Here’s to absent friends (Jenn), beautiful words, exploration, and humanity’s ability to accomplish wondrous things through hard work, determination, faith, and imagination. What’s next?

Introducing the New & Improved Soapboxville

July 13, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Welcome to the new and improved and newly updated Soapboxville.

Thanks to a lot of help from the hubs, a month off of Facebook, and all that I learned during the WordPress.com Blogging 101 course I’ve changed the look of and streamlined Soapboxville with the intention of better showing off my photos.

Don’t worry, I still intend to write, and to opine, and to ramble, and to rant; this update just allows me to share larger photos while continuing to write, ramble, and opine.

To celebrate the completion of renovations I’m sharing some of my photos from a walk I took on May 22^nd while I was in Philly to shoot the Swann Memorial and Love Park fountains.

Love Park Fountain

Swann Memorial Fountain Snippet in Black & White

A Hoola Hoop Girl, a Ghost Pirate, and a Bird Named Oscar

June 29, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

The Tall Ships were in Philly last week for a weekend-long festival. The festival itself was a huge mess with long lines to get on the boats, boats closing early because the crowds were too great, and really poor crowd control.

I went there with dreams of gorgeous shots of gorgeous ships but I don’t have the wide angle lens required for that and the crowd was way too messy to really have a space to stand back and get a decent shot so I focused on photographing people instead. This first photo is probably one of the best I’ve even taken of a person.

Hoola Hoop Girl at Tall Ships Festival at Penn’s Landiing

The following photos are also a few of my favorites from the day. Props to the living statue ghost pirate for posing for me.

living statue ghost pirate

Oscar’s person really didn’t want his picture taken

Of Raccoons and a Big Storm

June 27, 2015 by carol anne Leave a Comment

Robert Burns once wrote, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Murphy’s Law dictates, anything that can go wrong, will.

You’re adorable, but you can’t live in my attic

Apparently Burns and Murphy are wise and prophetic men, I took the month of June off from Facebook and Twitter because I believe Social Media stifles creativity and long-form writing. I took the month of June off from social media because I wanted to work on restoring my concentration, and to work on updating and reviving Soapboxville.

I was doing just that through the Blogging 101 course on WordPress, when Cupcake Kitty woke us at 4am Monday morning to alert us to sounds in the ceiling. What was making the unsettling sounds coming from the attic? Ghost? Vampire? Zombies? Raccoons? Ding! Ding! Ding! Give the gal in the flowered hat a prize. You guessed it, raccoons. There are raccoons living in our attic. At this point I’d take the ghosts over the raccoons, exorcists are probably cheaper than exterminators.

It took until Tuesday afternoon to even get anyone out here, and because as an infant I was cursed by the bad weather gods (I always bring the bad weather, plan a vacation with me, you’ll see.) four hours after the trap was placed on our roof, what was first thought to be a tornado but has now been identified as straight-line winds of 70mph tore through the area bringing down our back and side fences, a tree in our backyard, and some branches in the side yard. Blessedly the trap stayed on the roof and Wednesday morning we awoke to one trapped raccoon on the roof; we rejoiced, we danced, we waved our hands in the air like we just don’t care. We thought, “This nightmare is quickly on its way to being over.” Oh, if only we knew.

What’s Left of our Back Fence

I awoke at 5:30am Thursday morning to find a second raccoon in the trap on the roof. Because I didn’t want to wake the neighbors I quietly rejoiced, went back inside, back to bed and slept the sleep of someone with delusions of anything ever being easy and on the right track. I slept two peaceful hours (the sleep of a fool) until it was food o’clock and time to feed Snowball and Cupcake Kitty. I was on my way outside to take a photo of the second trapped raccoon when the hubs came in to tell me the trap was empty and broken. That’s right, the second raccoon escaped. Have you ever seen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation? Here is where I had a full-on Clark W. Griswold tantrum/meltdown.

So on day four of the raccoons in the attic fiasco and day two of the great trapping fiasco (Sensing a pattern here?) one raccoon was trapped and taken away and two were still on the loose in our attic. The Orkin guy arrived and said he’d talk to his supervisor about what to do about the defective trap putting the whole process a day behind. The process being, us paying an upfront fee for them to come out, put traps on the roof, check the traps each day and take away and release the captured raccoons for five days; after those five days they charge $95 a day to come out to fill and check the traps and hopefully remove the trapped raccoons in them. (We really need this to be completed in the 5 days, REALLY.)

Friday morning dawned with now two empty traps. Our daily visit with our friendly Orkin man brought about the information that they don’t work on weekends so the two traps on our roof will remain baited with food and open until Monday morning when our friendly Orkin man will come back and once again set them to spring closed if a raccoon goes in them. Monday is day five; a supervisor will be out to speak to us on Monday or Tuesday about an additional day based on the defective trap. I’m skeptical that at least one of them will never get back in a trap after being caught in the defective one for a few hours.

So here we are, Saturday afternoon, six days into the raccoons in the attic fiasco with at two or more raccoons living in our attic until at least Monday night. And; that peaceful month to focus, write, create, and update Soapboxville? Gone. With any luck I’ll pull myself together next week or the week after and get back down to the business at hand.