Travelin' and Treed

This has been quite a week! The election on Tuesday brought me elation and renewed hope for the world; the Blogblast for Peace on Thursday, including Alex’s involvement, was a soaring spiritual moment with all of its love and peace. On Wednesday, besides John Denver being featured at the Coffeehouse, I traveled the longest distance that I have in 18 or so months.

I had not seen my mother since March of 2007 when she was still in the rehab center. I had never seen the new house she purchased so that she could live closer to my sister. The combination of my health condition and problems with my car prevented me fro traveling so far.

But Wednesday I made the trip. With an extra bottle of oxygen and Tasha along just in case something unexpected happened, I was finally able to visit my mother.

Most of the photographs below chronicle the trip. Tasha took most of them, capturing the changing colors of the season as I drove south on Interstate 65 and the visit with Mom and her new house. The last two photographs I shot Wednesday evening and relate a silly furball story.

I was tired when I got home from the trip, but didn't get to go to sleep until after midnight. Alex went out the door as Tasha and I came in. When he had spent a couple hours outside, I opened the doors, front and back, and called his name.

He usually replies, even if he isn’t ready to come inside. This time he didn’t. So I searched and searched for the furball until I finally heard him crying; he was 30 feet up in the branches of the tree in front of my house. Obviously, he was afraid to climb down. This was the first time (that I know of) that Alex has been treed since 2005, when he was still a young adventurer.

I spent hours trying to talk the furball down from the tree. After it became dark, I went into the house to get a flashlight; when I returned to Alex’s tree, the furball had climbed up to a higher branch!

Finally my new next door neighbors, a young couple named Tiffany and Diane, saw Alex’s plight and helped in a way that I could not. Tiffany climbed as far up the tree as she could and talked Alex down to where she could reach him. Then she handed him down to Diane. I spent the next couple of hours soothing the furball.