RIP Grayson K. Buchanan | 26 December 1993 – 4 September 2009

26 December 1993 - 4 September 2009

Grayson always howled when I returned from a trip. The longer the trip, the more he howled. “Moooooooooom, you leeeeeeeeeft meeeeeee,” he seemed to say. He prowled and howled in front of the door as soon as I put my keys in the lock. He couldn’t wait for me to sit down when he would butt my hands and my chin so that I would start making up for all the strokes he had missed while I was gone.

Grayson was my cat, so named because he was gray. He was my second pet, the first being a hamster named Maizie who lived a few months with me and my housemates on Chaucer. Grayson was born the day after Christmas 1993 in the closet of a house rented by friends Don & Alex. Ignoring conventional wisdom about handling kittens, Don & Alex brought them out for us to play with when we gathered there for Sunday dinners. Grayson picked me when the little fur ball tumbled over my legs to attack the drawstring on my hoodie. I took him home at 8 weeks old on Valentine’s Day 1994 along with another of the kittens, a black & tan Siamese-marked brother that I named PC. A year later, PC ended up going to a new home, but that’s another story.

Grayson was a co-dependent kitty, following me around the house, waiting for a lap to be available for snuggles, and sleeping curled up next to my stomach at night. He moved with me as I moved from church to church as Methodist pastors do, from Houston to Kountze to Kilgore to Mont Belvieu and back to Houston. On the occasions when I’ve lived with my mother in my adult life, he was a sign of her love for me. Mom doesn’t much care for pets, but she allowed him to move in, too, litter box and all.

He was diagnosed with chronic renal failure about a year ago. He had lost a lot of weight and was more lethargic than usual for an old cat. The vet suggested treating him for the weekend to see if he would bounce back. I said good-bye to him then, not sure if he would last until Monday. Grayson did indeed bounce back, but keeping him that way meant daily subcutaneous fluid treatments. If you’ve seen the episode of The Closer where Deputy Chief Brenda Lee brings her Kitty to work, takes out an IV bag of fluid on a hanger, and treats Kitty with the fluid and a shot – that’s what I’ve done for the last year. It’s actually quite common and only takes about 10 minutes, and I never needed to take the cat to work. It was worth it to me to have another year with him.

I thought a cat would be a good pet for me because they’re low maintenance. If you have to leave for a day or two, you can just leave out the food and the water, and they’ll be fine indoors. Grayson was fine on those occasions, but he definitely didn’t like being left. I was with him in the end, scratching his head as the vet gave him that final injection.

If, when I was gone, Grayson expected at any moment for me to jump up to sit with him on the sofa, to snuggle with him as he went to sleep, to rub my face against his as we worked on the laptop, then I now know how he felt. No wonder he howled.

Reality Check: High School

My prom dress (which I still have) was a size 12. I would love to be a size 12 again, but I’m quite proud that I’ve gone from being a 24W to a 16W at this point.

I started thinking about this because the current path of my weight journey has me reconnecting with people from high school. I’m a member of a Facebook support group focusing on healthy eating/exercise/weight loss started by a high school acquaintance. I also reconnected with a woman I went to elementary, junior high, and high school with when I started the process to get a lap-band. (More on the lap-band later)

I chose my lap-band surgeon after hearing him speak at one of the Methodist Hospital’s free seminars. He was funny & nice & had the Methodist Hospital seal of approval. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just have the surgery and go from there. My insurance company required me to prove that I needed it by undergoing a 6-month doctor-supervised diet. If you get to the point where a lap-band is a viable option under the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (BMI 40 or over with no comorbidities, 35 or over with 1 comorbidity) then 6 months is not going to make a huge difference.

However, I dutifully went to the doctor’s office to start the 6-month plan. I knew that the surgeon didn’t supervise this stage; there was another doctor in his office that did that. I was surprised when I saw the name on the door: Amy Woehrmann, MD. If I went to high school with you, yep, it was THAT Amy Woehrmann. She’s married to the surgeon.

Since we had been through so many years of schools together, Amy and I got to talking about those days. She told me about a girl who had picked on her and been incredibly mean to her. That same girl had picked on me, and been incredibly mean to me! Now this may not surprise some of you that a mean girl was mean to everyone, but pretty, smart, petite Amy Woerhmann was Miss CCHS! She was a cheerleader. She graduated in the top of the class. She was sweet and nice. I wasn’t surprised that I got picked on because I was the nerdy type, and nerds always get picked on. But, Miss CCHS?

I’ve worked with high school students for most of my career, and I should have known, but this was proof, once again, that high school was hell for almost all of us. My new Facebook friend (hi LGD!) has mentioned being jealous of the smart girls like me. I was always jealous of the pretty drill team and cheerleader types. Seems we spend a lot of time in high school being jealous of others.

We’re grown ups now, though, aren’t we? My therapist says that women come into their own in their 40s and 50s. I know that there’s no way I’d want to do high school again, or even my 20s or 30s, though I enjoyed college.

That high school attitude continues, though, doesn’t it? How much time do we waste wishing we could be something or someone else? I look at pictures of myself in high school and one of my wishes was that I had known how cute I was then! But even today, we spend a lot of time wishing we could look different, thinking that if we looked different, our lives would be great.

My conversation with Amy taught me that even if I had been Miss CCHS, I would still have had hardships back then. There are happy, successful people of all shapes, sizes, and features; and there are miserable failures of all shapes, sizes, and features. I’m not meant to be a size 0. Perhaps I’m not meant to be any single-digit size. If I’m healthy at 150 lbs and my body fat percentage is under 30, then I’ll be happy. Truthfully, I’m pretty happy now at size 16W because I know I’m taking care of the body and the life that I have. Challenges come, no matter who you are or what size you are.  Likewise, happiness & fulfillment come no matter who you are or what size you are.

We wasted enough time in high school being jealous of others.  Let’s use our time these days appreciating who we are and where we are now.

Genealogy Software for Mac: Reunion 9 & Heredis

(Thanks to Genealogy Wise for the prompt)

Without the internet and software for managing huge database, genealogy wouldn’t be nearly as addictive as it is. I recently passed 10,000 individuals in my genealogy database, most of whom have some blood or marriage connection. It makes me want to dig deeper, to know their stories beyond what can be found on family trees, and in the census, and in birth and death certificates. There’s an awful lot in those documents alone.

So, 10,000 individuals! How do I keep it all sorted?

For a long time I used a French application called Heredis. It’s a very professional application that easily manages a lot of information, but I chose it for how it published the data to HTML for the web. I like the clean presentation, and I especially like the way it inserts a pedigree chart for each individual.  It easily manages private individuals, allows for witnesses, and multiple links for individuals for whom there is not a blood tie.  I like this feature to provide a link to servants and lodgers that might show up in the tree somewhere else, or that might provide an entry for someone else doing research. Heredis also offered the 3-D family tree long before other Mac apps, though I found it too slow and cumbersome to be of any use.

However, Heredis had some bugs in the app that altered data. Specifically, it would hang up when I was entering locations, and then insert “Mississippi” for birth locations when I restarted the app.  This is unacceptable, no matter how much I like the app.  Heredis isn’t supported well, with few updates and patches.  There used to be a Windows version, but that was discontinued in favor of the Mac OS X version.

I did some research and switched to Reunion 9 for Mac, which is the granddaddy of Mac genealogy apps. Again, publication for the web was the determining factor.  I like how Reunion manages related files, allowing me to publish all of my research, including PDFs of original census images, birth and death certificates, photos and other media for individuals and families. It’s the best filing system I’ve seen, very easy to use with drag and drop insertion on each individual or family card. The presentation is easy to navigate through family cards, showing parents, grandparents and children on the same screen.  I’m looking forward to playing with the web presentation as I learn to edit the CSS. Managing sources is easy, though some coaching on appropriate citation would be helpful. I’m also looking forward to using the iPhone version in a year or so when I finally break down and get one.

While Reunion allows for multiple parent links for an individual, in the case of stepchildren or adoptees, for example, I miss the links to individuals who are not members of the immediate family.  I feel like I could present a better picture of the household with Heredis.

I almost went with Mac Family Tree for the feature that allows you to see migration patterns using mapping software, but it wasn’t that easy to use, and again, I preferred the HTML presentation in Reunion. I’ve watched Mac Family Tree develop since it was first linked to the Mac OS X download site. The software developers add impressive new features with every release.  We’ll see where it goes, but even with .ged files, switching apps is such a pain.

I’m still switching from Heredis because I’ll start to correct links and end up following a line and adding census images and gravestones and photos and anything else I find. Here’s hoping Reunion 10 keeps up with Mac Family Tree.