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Baja Manitoba Free Press

98K views 454 replies 26 participants last post by  moustress 
#1 ·
This is the first edition of the New Improved Baja Manitoba Free Press.

Long before I started keeping mousies, I was married to a person who fancied himself to be a Southern Gentleman, and he complained how I had dragged him off to the frozen northlands of Minnesota. One morning, about a month ofter we arrived in Minnesota after a nuptial flight from Maryland, he was heard to exclaim, "eighty degrees below zero" while listening to our local news and weather station at 6:30 in the morning in December 1983. Yes, children, it was The Real Thing; colder than a titches wit; cold enough to freeze your eyeballs if exposed for more than about two seconds. (We'd been married for about six weeks, and he had forgotten that he'd asked me if I wanted him to move back to Minneapolis, Minnesota with me.) It had snowed a foot the day we arrived in town, and then it snowed another foot. Our engine block was frozen solid, so we were out on New Years Eve, busing to and fro for a New Year Eve party.

You see, we pride ourselves, here in Minnesota, on carrying on regardless of the weather or the economy. At 85F below zero, (our Zero is already 32 degrees below the point at which water freezes) we waited for a bus at about 12:45 am on the first day of January, 1984. a car stopped, rolled down the passenger side window, and the driver yelled, "Jeez, are you insane?! Get in and I'll drive you wherever you are going!!"

Of such things are Minnesotans and mousekeepers made. It was about 15 years later than the mousekeeping started. I'd just gotten my first computer, and had come to the conclusion that I had no comfortable use for a mouse with no fur. I was stranded here to face another Minnesota winter all by myself. I needed something warn and furry, and my husband was 1400 miles away, back in !998, when my daughter caught a wild house mouse. She wanted to keep it, so we broke out the little plastic tank that had been occupied by a gecko or chameleon for a couple of weeks until...nvm. So we kept the mousie, but I made her let it go after about two days. The poor little thing was not going to ever survive happily in captivity, so we took it outside and let it go, after which I agreed on a trip to a pet store to check out the available stock.

And, now, here I am, eleven years later, airing my thoughts on an international mouse forum. Those first two mousies were so wonderful; two girlies, one of whom liked to be handled, and another who like to be handled on the off chance it might be able to escape. Ah, those mouses...gotta love 'em. One was black and one was champagne. I thought my mousie desires were fulfilled. And then I saw a tank full of about fifty (way too many) big meeces of every color I could imagine, and then some. Someone had dumped a whole mousery, it seemed, and I was to be the beneficiary. The shopkeeper was also selling 10 gallon tanks that had minor cracks, and I stopped on the way home with my 20 new meeces and got material to construct tops, and a mousery was born.
 
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#452 ·
Ten ten eighteen; life goes on. I am enjoying the Nicollet Mall quite a bit. I live right at the end of it, and there a free bus that goes right in front of the place and runs all the way from Grant St, my street, past the Downtown Minneapolis Library. Many businesses survived the closing which lasted almost two years due to contractor mistakes.

Target is a godsend in this location. It's a department store that also has a small grocery section with a pretty good produce section right at street level. I sometimes take a quick trip on the free bus to get milk there. It takes about 20-30 minutes for a round trip. I use the free bus at least two or three times a week. I'm getting in a good bit of walking on my various visits to stores and my friends place.

Nuts and bolts work has started in my therapy and I have great hopes for it. My physical health remains about the same, with the osteosrthiritis in my hands being tha most irritating. I had an annual physical today, and was dismayed to find my Internist had never heard of replacement joints for hands. I have some joints in my fingers that don't flex at all any more. It concerns me a little, but, hey, he's an internist not am orthopedist.

He approved my suggested medication change after I had a few sick days with nausea from one of my newer drugs. I hope he goes and learns about joint replacement for hands. It would appear that the spell I had a few months ago was "just" a panic attack. I had an EKG which was as normal as can be expected. Oddly, the right branch bundle blockage that made my heart beat backwards appeared to have disappeared. I doubt the results, I do not think the assistant really knew what she was doing.

I now have a worker from a local agency to help me take care of things I need a car for, and they are also qualified as therapists, so we spend a half an hour just talking. It's been a little weird having strangers in my place and driving me around. I hope to get one that lasts for awhile. They need to be good listeners as I do go on, and on, and on......

I have been feeling pretty good in general. Thanks for reading!
 
#454 ·
It's been nearly a year since I checked in here. I write quite a bit on Facebook these days where I can be found under the name Louie Spooner Bucklin, in a private page.

I did quite a bit of heavy duty therapy in the last year and half; it's EMDR, and it is a remarkably powerful tool for healing from serious traumas. It is very hard work, and I am going to start a new project with my therapist tomorrow, building my ideal mother in my head. So far it has just about cured me of panic attacks and even the feelings that might lead to that, like vertigo and nausea, are very rare.

The place I am living is challenging being near downtown and has a lot of homeless folk in the vicinity as it's near a lot of the services used by the homeless. The population of this building is a bit challenging, which is not surprising considering that folks who end up in public housing often have a laundry list of personal problems. Old age, medical problem both psychiatric and physical, distressed relationships, etc. I feel like I fit in in this place.

The free bus is such a great thing about this location. I go downtown a few times a week for various things. My arthritis has progressed to point that I rarely play guitar anymore. My finger joints are deformed and have lost a lot of flexability. In all honesty, I know I'd have a hard time running a mousery like the one I used to have. I'm on the waiting list to get a one bedroom apartment when it become available. There are only about thirty of those, so it will be awhile. In the meanwhile, my little studio apartment works just fine. My arthritis is bad enough that I have some difficulty taking as good care of it as I would like.

Mice almost identical to my blue splashed line has shown up on Facebook pages. That is just GREAT! All my work has not gone to waste!
 
#455 ·
This may be my last edition of my BMFP blog. I still adore meeces and I had a great time, for the most part, being a part of this Forum.

I'm on Facebook under my legal name of Lois Spooner Bucklin (Louie). Maybe you'll find me there.

Here's a last poetic contribution.

ot off my fingertips...

global

now we feel the beating heart of the world
in our hearts that ache for the deadly consequence
yes now we are one in the worst kind of way
answering that challenge we ride the swell to its end
sit on top of the behemoth of human pride and folly
say stop say stop say oh goddess please say stop
no answer there at all after breaking that holy contract
now it heaves and strains we rush to stop the gap
floods of blood and piss spill into view we gasp
seeing what it is simply that we would not know it
for the untamed wild fury of the wholeness

Louie Spooner Bucklin copyright 2020
 
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