You and I Are Too Old Not to Trust Our Higher Power

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Childless cat-loving old lady gets a kiss

According to JC Vance, I am a faithless, cat-loving wretch

First, I don’t like cats. Let’s just get that out of the way. Okay, well, most house cats. I’ve been known to do body work on 500-lb tigers, so Bad Chance Vance, let’s see you do that, you woman-hater. Just saying.

I even got a cheetah kiss, above, which terrified the handlers but delighted me no end. I trust them. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but years of working on very large animals has taught me that from elephant to oxen to donkey to camel to horse, the way they say thank you for making them feel good is to lick-usually in the face.

Okay, so maybe I do love cats. Some. But not enough to own one. Especially one this big (and no, they aren’t drugged):

This is Big Bang. He was a sucker for belly rubs. And by the way, their foot pads smell amazing. Try it sometime. No? I don’t blame you.

But wait. This is an article about fence posts.

What?

Okay, really now. How did I start out with cheetahs and tigers?

It’s about having faith. I have a lot of faith, although the faith I practice doesn’t come handily packaged in a Jesus-for-sale boxed set. It’s the kind that comes from having life humble the hell out of me regularly, delivering far better solutions than whatever I thought I wanted.

I’m always wrong. Mother Nature is always right. I trust Her animals not to crush my skull, and she delivers experiences of a lifetime. (*Please DO NOT try this in the wild, I only work on animals accustomed to humans. Tourons, have at it; the Darwin Effect works.)

Nature has taught me to have faith, until I get so totally up my own stuff that I go stupid. Hence, fence posts.

But first, context.

September is a month for remembrance. The above big cat photos are from two years ago, just as I began my journey of the most recent seven surgeries. My left hand was first. I headed off to Colombia and Thailand, newly repaired hand in wraps.

Back then my house was for sale and I thought I was on my way to live overseas. Mother Nature intervened.

By March of ‘23, I was camping in Northern California. No takers on my house. I’d given myself a month exploring the Oregon/Cali coast before having surgery on my right foot. Crescent City was my southernmost destination.

I found myself in the misty, cold, moody Stout Grove of the great redwood forests. There, I realized that I had put a for sale sign on the house of my dreams. A trip to northern California in 1984 had convinced me that I wanted to live in these forest and close to the ocean.

I have a huge thing about coastal redwoods. A big emotional love affair, in fact. While I had firs, the effect was the same: a home surrounded by quiet giants. I’d found the perfect house and there it was, for sale. Dummy.

So I bit the financial bullet- it turned out to be a very large howitzer- and recommitted to the house.

Now I can finally get to the fence post story.

As someone with questionable feet that are still healing, living in a steep, hilly area has been a challenge. The bit of land to the immediate west of me is HOA. As with all homeowners I am tasked to maintain that plot. A lot of big older trees have died and that means more heat.

So I planted four maples and a dogwood, watered, weeded, all the things, including keeping that area gorgeous. As my maples have grown and added bits of shade, the stepping stones on my hillside have loosened with rain, human and deer activity.

I’ve taken six bad falls. My handyman has fallen three times.

It’s a terrible accident waiting to happen. In today’s world, a juicy lawsuit. Anyone working on that house has to navigate that hill. There are no handholds and the ground is unstable.

Silly me, taking into account that I am aging and hope to stay here, I decided to put in a guard rail. My handyman, perhaps thinking more about his size than mine, began installing huge 4 x 4 posts on the hill, setting off all kinds of alarms for the neighborhood rosy-nosies who were terrified I was trying to fence in property that wasn’t mine.

Well, that didn’t end well. The HOA came after me waiving the CC&Rs. I spent a grand putting in eight posts, and promptly had to spend another grand getting all that concrete out again. So I was left with eight big fat deep holes in the hill, with posts sticking out of them so that I don’t end up planted in one myself.

This Sunday past I visited a local forest products facility, where five gorgeous trees had just landed. Big ones, fast-growing. Hmmm, methinks, I wonder if the rosy-nosies will bitch and complain if I put plants in my potholes?

So I put the trees on hold, reached out to the head of the HOA (who is a tree guy himself) and asked if the HOA would have a fit if I planted something nice in those great big (dangerous) holes.

NOT AT ALL, he said grandly. We’re always telling people that if they want a privacy screen, plant trees.

A forest is coming.

Deposit photos

Today, five coastal redwoods, my beloved sequoias, will be nestled into the potholes previously occupied by fence posts. They are going to be huge. They love being planted in small groups as their roots hold hands underground. I am quite happy to set up a soaking hose to ensure that for the first year, those thirsty trees get all they need to settle in for the long haul.

I can hear Mother Nature laughing her ass off at me.

I can’t wait to find trees for the other three holes. Sure, I overloaded my poor beleaguered credit card, but it’s all for a good cause. Not only will I have my own Stout Grove, but those trees will provide me and anyone else with the guard rail necessary to safely navigate that steep hill.

I wasted a lot of time being frustrated about not being able to build a guard rail. I was so busy being mad that I couldn’t imagine a far better, natural answer:

Gorgeous, stately sequoias which will help block that hot Western sun from heating my house in the summer. Additional protection from noise and the rosy-nosies.

What I am getting isn’t just a lot prettier, it’s perfect.

I’m going to get my guard rail. A privacy screen. And sequoia sentinels which will give me and future owners pleasure for years to come.

Mother knows best.

When I get out of my own way, I am reminded of all the reasons to have faith. We can be so busy focusing on a solution that just isn’t working that we are blocking one that will.

Oh, and one more big cat story to underscore faith.

At one point, while I was working on a purring cheetah, my braid tickled its nose. With claw sheathed, the cheetah swatted me, catching my ear and my cheek. Had it unsheathed its claws, I’d have no face. I didn’t move, kept scrubbing his ears as he purred, and quietly tucked my braid into my shirt.

I had faith that this cat knew my intentions. He did. He just didn’t like having his ear tickled.

You can see the blood on my shirt in this photo with our perfectly calm boy.

You scream, you scare them, you can be seriously injuried or die. The handler quietly brought me a paper towel and we grinned at each other while the cheetah purred happily.

Let’s see Vance do THAT.

In this regard, I am a faithless, proud, childless cat lady indeed.

Let’s let Mother Nature play.

Photo by Nikolay Maslov on Unsplash

I hope you had fun with this today. I delighted in taking a turn down memory lane and joining the ranks of childless cat ladies for the Democratic ticket.

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Above all, go play with your Mother. It does us all good, and She really does know best.