{"id":292,"date":"2009-11-12T08:28:51","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T16:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisabrounstein.com\/blog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2014-03-01T20:22:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-01T20:22:16","slug":"one-foot-in-front-of-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"Keep Going…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"longI fell asleep on the couch last night in one of those awkward positions – sitting up, kind of, with my neck cocked over on a pillow and my legs stretched out in front of me on the floor. \u00a0 I have asked my husband on numerous occasions to please, please, please not leave me that way. \u00a0 He insists that he “tried” to wake me a couple of times. \u00a0 Hmmm. \u00a0 So, I woke with a kink in my neck and feet that didn’t want to work. \u00a0 I stumbled into bed and slept pretty well. \u00a0 But I woke this morning feeling like I just can’t do a thing. \u00a0 I brushed my teeth and put on my walking clothes. \u00a0 I made it as far as the computer which is across the room from the door to go outside to actually walk. \u00a0 What’s going on with me?<\/p>\n

\"momlisa\"We had a lovely day yesterday, short, but lovely. \u00a0 John had the day off for Veteran’s Day. \u00a0 We decided to meet my mother down at South Coast Plaza. \u00a0 It was a nice half-way point. \u00a0 I hadn’t seen her in a while and wanted to bring her the goodies I bought for her in Amsterdam. \u00a0 Traffic was light because of the holiday. \u00a0 I had walked in the morning so the day was ours. \u00a0 The mall was not at all how I remembered it from my childhood. \u00a0 We walked around the mall and poked in and out of some of the stores. \u00a0 I was surprised at the high-end stores there and wonder how they are making it. \u00a0 Gucci and Louis Vuitton are there. \u00a0 There is a sign that the Prada store will open in 2010. \u00a0 Who is shopping at these stores? \u00a0 My mother had wanted to go to LA Eyeworks to look at frames for glasses but they are no longer at South Coast Plaza. \u00a0 She was disappointed. \u00a0 I told her she needs to come up and visit and I will take her to the store here. We went to lunch at Lawry’s. \u00a0 It was okay. \u00a0 The company was great! \u00a0 The food was just okay. \u00a0 \"lisaI had a Cobb Salad with a generous helping of dry turkey and a rather smooth and sweet blue cheese dressing.<\/p>\n

One thing I noticed there, that I wasn’t expecting, was I drew a lot of attention. \u00a0 People stared at me and they were quite blatant about it. \u00a0 Sure I am bigger than most but I found myself getting more and more uncomfortable. \u00a0 I was already uncomfortable in my clothes. \u00a0 My pants are baggier than I would like so I felt, for lack of a better word, kind of clownish. \u00a0 Maybe it was my attitude that drew attention. \u00a0 I don’t know. \u00a0 It certainly wasn’t my experience of Holland where I didn’t feel like people gave a crap about how I looked. \u00a0 I felt judged and awkward yesterday walking through the mall.<\/p>\n

We got back to LA later in the day. \u00a0 It was a short visit with Mom. \u00a0 We will see her in two weeks for Thanksgiving. \u00a0 I needed to go to Target and \"johnUlta and Trader Joe’s…life maintenance…and it was nice to have John with me for the ride. \u00a0 He had decided he wanted to get a new phone. \u00a0 Last night I took him over to the Verizon store where he got the new Droid phone. \u00a0 WOW…is an understatement. \u00a0 What an amazing piece of technological wonder. \u00a0 It is awesome! \u00a0 I can see it as an iPhone killer for sure. \u00a0 It’s sleek. \u00a0 It’s powerful. \u00a0 It has a slide out qwerty keyboard. \u00a0 Now, I want one. \u00a0 Yes, I have found the phone that will make me give up my Blackberry. \u00a0 I am not due for an upgrade until March. \u00a0 We’ll see what the next four months will bring.<\/p>\n

\"chuck_outside_1_72\"I realize the thing that feels like it is stopping me today is it’s the anniversary of the day we lost our Chuck. \u00a0 Chuck was our fabulous cat! \u00a0 He actually was our neighbor’s cat. \u00a0 Many of you know his wonderful story. \u00a0 He was a big lanky boy of a cat. \u00a0 As our neighbor liked to say about him, “he was his own man.” \u00a0 She got him as a kitten in 1989 and he always had a powerful personality. \u00a0 I met him when I moved here in 1995. \u00a0 He would swagger up the driveway and dane to be pet. \u00a0 He would meow emphatically to get the attention he wanted on his terms. \u00a0 He was an indoor-outdoor cat. \u00a0 He owned the neighborhood. \u00a0 With time our neighborhood and our lives changed. \u00a0 He never came into my apartment because my cat Groucho would have none of it. \u00a0 He would come to the door and ask to come in (as if I had ever let him in) and she would puff up and growl and yell at him through the door. \u00a0 He never gave up. \u00a0 After she passed away and then John moved out here, little did I know, he still hadn’t given up on getting in here. \u00a0 John, the big softy, and Chuck started a beautiful relationship unbeknown to me. \u00a0 As it turns out, one day, John was outside making salmon on the Q for lunch while I was at work. \u00a0 Chuck sauntered up to John and must have said something like, “hey, what’s for lunch? Salmon!? \u00a0 I LOVE salmon!!” I didn’t know this love affair had started and was surprised to find Chuck walking past me up the walk into my apartment one night. \u00a0 \"sunflowers_blue_72\"From that night on, he would come and visit all the time. \u00a0 Some nights he would stay and some nights he would ask to leave to roam his neighborhood. \u00a0 New neighbors moved in with two HUGE dogs. \u00a0 The dogs are not cat friendly and killed one our neighbor’s other cats. \u00a0 It was devastating and terrifying. \u00a0 But Chuck would still insist on wandering the streets at night. \u00a0 We would sleep with one eye open and an ear to the door for him. \u00a0 Then one day he stopped asking to leave at night and we stopped offering. \u00a0 As with most geriatric cats he had his share of illnesses. \u00a0 It was hard to watch this strong independent cat become more and more dependent. \u00a0 Our apartment became a kitty hospice with me getting up early (really, really early) everyday with him and giving him Sub Q fluids and a B12 shot once a week. \u00a0 I cooked a special breakfast for him. \u00a0 I bought him different kinds of foods to tempt him. \u00a0 I cooked fresh salmon or chicken or ground beef. \u00a0 He got pills for his Hyper Thyroid and he got vitamins hidden in meat baby food. \u00a0 The fluids were for his kidney failure (CRF.) And, we loved him like we have never loved another living soul. \u00a0 We were so fortunate to have had the time we had with him! \u00a0 A year ago today he left us. \u00a0 Just as he came to us on his terms and was our neighbor’s cat on his terms he left us on his terms. \u00a0 Yes, he was his own man. \u00a0 And, we miss him!<\/p>\n

Physically I feel great today! \u00a0 I know I will feel that much greater if I walk. \u00a0 Maybe I will wait and walk with John tonight. \u00a0 Of course, there is the possibility that John will want to play with his Droid tonight…I don’t know that he will be able to walk and play with his Droid. We’ll see what today brings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fell asleep on the couch last night in one of those awkward positions – sitting up, kind of, with my neck cocked over on a pillow and my legs stretched out in front of me on the floor. \u00a0 I have asked my husband on numerous occasions to please, please, please not leave me… Continue reading Keep Going…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-los-angeles","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}