Serafina Pekkala 7/25/03 - 7/31/08

Our dear little Serafina passed away this morning at the Birdie Hospital. She was going in for her weekly antibiotic shot and abdominal tap. She was accompanied by the Wogdog and they were tweeting and preening right up to when they went back into the exam room. Serafina has been having more and more trouble breathing and she did look especially puffy and out of breath this morning. But at least she still had enough energy to head snuggle with the little Wogdog.

The vet said that she was acting fairly feisty and normal when she had her antibiotic injection and a first abdominal tap.... but when she (the vet) went in to try a second tap to remove some more of the liquid in her abdomen, little Serafina just suddenly stopped breathing and died. It was that fast. It is a small, but comforting consolation.

I drove home with a rather confused and alone Wogdog and a very sad looking small box. The box just kept making me cry every time i looked at it. It seemed so strange that it could possibly hold Serafina. Maybe her body could fit in there, but all the things that made up her real self - her incredibly loud and energetic tweeting, her superior flying abilities, her undying love for Terfle, her way of hanging upside down like a bat on the front of the cage, her adorable way of sleeping with her head tucked into her wing whilst singing beautiful little chirpy songs to herself - those things could not fit in such a small box.

Dave met me at home and we opened the box together and put Serafina's body out on her carrying cage so that the rest of the birdies could see what had happened and hopefully have even a flicker of understanding. It's impossible to know if this does anything, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. They are a very close knit flock and the sudden change from 4 birdies to 3 will certainly impact them in some way.

It does seem like there is a tangible emptiness at home.

We are going to bury her tomorrow morning.

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and well wishes and prayers over the last month and a half. Serafina was one well-loved birdie. I know I felt like I could love her unconditionally with a clear and open heart. And that is really the most beautiful and important thing we all have to offer one another, isn't it?

Happy Birthday Serafina!

She made it! Serafina turns 5 today. :)

(from L to R: Serafina Pekkala, Terfle, Rowsby Woof, The Faerie Wogdog)

bike!!!!!!!!

yay! it hasn't come yet, but this will be my new road bike!!!!!!! thank you sossososoosososososoososososososososososososoo much to all of you who chipped in. :)

week long birthdays are the way to go....

i think maybe perhaps my birthday is finally over. maybe. yeah... i think so. i would call it a pretty fantastic success this year. much fun and friends and food and celebrating. :) big hugs to everyone for sharing it with me. thank you.

i think it started last friday with my decision to let myself run around the city and do whatever my inner arwen wanted to do... so i biked to the circus center super excited and anxious and nervous to get back up on my tissu and to my utter despair, it turned out to be a summer camp day where the kids get to use the entire big aerial gym. all day. dammit. this was frustrating. i decided to not let it get me down and went straight to get a mani/pedi whilst learning my lines for ACT 2. i consider this to be impressive multi-tasking. now i have blue toes. and i know my lines (pretty much). pleasing. stopped by haight street and had a tofu skewer at askew grill. i had never been there before. it had couscous with it. i have not had couscous in a really long time. twas pretty yummy. then i headed off to find the georgiou outlet in SOMA. I had already looked for it about a week ago and gave up and went to REI. (if you know both of these stores, you know that this makes no sense.) But I was determined this time. Turns out that I had been about a half a block from it the first time, but the addresses go out of order on this one block of 7th street. rather confusing. but. success! I love georgiou's dresses. i own about 3 or 4 and they all fit like someone has sewn them right on to my body. after years and years of feeling like my size was somewhere in no mans land, this store was pretty exciting to find. But once i found it (there was one right here at work in Embarcadero 3), they decided to close the store about 6 months later. this figures, eh? BUT - they are based in San Francisco and have this weird little outlet store that is attached to their main warehouse. so anyway... once there, i found out from the saleswoman that the reason why i love their stuff so much is that it's made for tall, long people with broad shoulders. sweet!! I walked out of there with 4 things, including a dress to wear to arika's wedding for under $75. awesome. from there i had to stop by work. that was dumb, but pretty fast. i decided to go home and do exercises since i never got to train circus and then met dave at sports basement. i really love sports basement. they have FIVE levels! we had to return a bunch of stuff. and well, to be fair, also buy a bunch of stuff. :) i completely ruined the impact of the sale shopping i had done earlier in the day by purchasing a new bike jersey (well, actually, dave made me do it) that was just stupidly expensive. stupid. offensively expensive. but very, very comfortable. very. who knows? maybe it will even make me ride faster. by the time we were done with our consumer whoredom, we were starving and unable to think. we jumped on our motorcycles (when we ride together, but on separate bikes, we like to think we are in a gang. the anubis gang.) and wandered around the mission in a blood-sugar deprived stupor until we ended up at an italian restaurant that neither of us really wanted to go to... so we jumped back on the bikes and drove to Goat Hill Pizza instead. I think of this as my first b'day dinner, since Goat Hill was almost what I picked as the group dinner place. it was SOOOO tasty and we ate SOOOO much. i ate half a medium pizza. awesome.

on saturday i had to rehearse in berkeley, but afterwards i went on a birthday bike ride with elizabeth. it was our first time without the boys. we did awesome. we rode the paradise loop (over through mill valley and around through tiburon and back) and seriously had the most amazing evening ride ever! the fog never rolled in. we hit the golden gate bridge on the way back at about 8:40pm and there was NO FOG. i was in SHORT SLEEVES. the sun was setting over the headlands... there were flocks of pelicans in the sky and there were NO other bikes on the bridge. it was a kick ass birthday ride. and then jim and elizabeth took me (and dave) out to korean food so that i could have a bibimbop fix. TASTY!

on sunday i also had to rehearse in berkeley. but once back in the city, i came home and did something very uncharacteristic. i flopped onto the bed and read. SO NICE. :) "Case Histories", by Kate Atkinson (if you were interested). Then we headed over to debbie and michael's to have band practice. oops. no practice. we just hung out and debbie gave me stuff. :) From there, we all headed over to India Clay Oven where 19 people celebrated my birthday with me, including me. it was really special to have so many people there that mean so very much to me. it really drove home the whole 'creating your own family' thing when your own is so far away. thank you guys. i love you guys. i could keep being mushy, but i'll stop. it was really a great night and tasty and they had cherry nan. ????? wtf??????

OMIGOD. this is getting sooooooo long. i am rambling so much. i will do the next three days later.

other thoughts....

i feel like birthdays often become a reflective time. something that i know that i do not do enough. reflect. sit. think. i'm bad at yoga and i'm bad at meditating. i have a hard time quieting my mind. always have. i've thought back on the past year and felt proud of life accomplishments and proud of living life to the fullest, which is something i feel almost maniacally driven to do. but looking into the future i feel kind of, well, cloudy. i feel like i don't know what to 'shoot' for... what sort of goals to set... what to be excited about....passionate about. i've had a handful of 'aha!' moments in the last few days. mainly dealing with 1) having a kid 2) surrender 3) my place in the world 4) what i can do for the world; and 5) widening my ability to see beyond my own needs. whew. you, know... small stuff. ;) it's a bit unsettling actually. when you spend SO MUCH time running running running, it's always uncomfortable to suddenly have time to think. or actually, there hasn't been time to think, it's more that... sometimes, you don't get a choice.... it's just time. no amount of running can stop the thoughts. so i've just been thinking them. and trying to deal.

i keep having strange impulses. like cutting all my hair off. like becoming a teacher. becoming a better public servant. doing something about injustices. i don't know.... brain on rapid fire.

time. the issue is always time. time is friend. time is enemy.

serafina has been on the decline. she is having a really hard time breathing and the vet took some more fluid off her abdomen this morning, which is a whole other thing separate from her mass. :( the wogdog was a very good companion, but in some ways it makes it even sadder to see them kissing and beaking right before serafina goes in to get stabbed. dave and i have now both written her songs to play for her when she needs some calming time. i had forgotten just how much the birdies love the sound of the piano... so i wrote mine on that. dave added a pretty little melody to his and when he sits in front of her cage and sings it to her every morning it just about breaks my heart. i know that she will be leaving us soon and it almost makes it harder that she is fighting so hard to stay with us all. oh dear. ok. that's as much as i can talk about this at work.

aye-aye's are awesome

so - just to prove what a strange little lass the arwen has been since, well, birth, i am going to divulge another odd arwen animal story. When I was in 5th grade, we needed to choose an animal for a project that included a written report and an oral presentation. we probably had to practice our 'making an outline' skills for the paper as well.... (seems like we spent SO much time making outlines in 5th and 6th grade...) anyway... most people chose things like, oh, i don't know... horses. cats. maybe there was an elephant and a tiger. things like that. arwen chose the aye-aye. what? what the hell is an aye-aye? how did she find this here aye-aye? ok. get this... the encyclopedia. totally. she couldn't get over the fact that the encyclopedia told her that there were only about 50 left in the world. what? 50? how can this be? and all on this zany island nation called Madagascar. they are definitely pretty high up there on the weird list. check out the batty bat ears. the patchy hair. the creepy long middle finger. good stuff. totally fuzzy cuddly bunny stuff, right? ;) well anyway. i still think they are pretty awesome. they have really extraordinary hearing so that they can locate grubs in tree branches. once located, they use their overgrown beaver teeth to rip open the bark of the branch and then use that spindly weird-ass middle finger to shove in the hole and spear the grubs. i mean, isn't that awesome?!?!??!?! mother nature, folks. she's something else. (sadly, the people on madagascar think they are evil spirits/angry, dead family members returning to do bad stuff and so they kill them on sight. hence, 50 left. it was actually believed for a few years that they were extinct. thankfully, that was incorrect. although now there could still be about 50 left, but they just say that the count is 'unknown'.)

so please check out this amazing story regarding an aye-aye bred in captivity (their mating issues are pretty wacky too): aye-aye story

the video is also pretty cute. i mean, if you like wacky little aye-aye type things. which you should. look at this little guy!



and this one!!!

my mini-tri day

ok. circus is such an ass-kicker. i don't know if i have ever been this sore in my life. it just keeps getting worse. ouch. i can't even touch my pecs - it feels like i'm jabbing them with a fork.

but anyway...

the AMD offered up the really good idea today that swimming and/or soaking in the hot tub at the gym would be lower impact and getting things moving and probably beneficial. this was totally smart. go AMD! HOWEVER. the arweena has not swum in, um, huh, um, well, i doubt snorkeling counts, so, um, god, 4 years? 5 years? when the hell did I do 'Lobby Hero'? Not since then. Holy crap. so anyway, i boldly scooped up my swimsuit, located the well-aged bag of swim supplies (i still have my cap, my goggles, my ear plugs and my no-fog goggle spray *note to self - doesn't work* and somehow got my sorry broken ass to the gym.

remembering all the pool etiquette took a little while... and the pool was pretty busy, which was a little intimidating, but i pick up some fins and floaty things and just jumped in and went for it. 1000 meters later (after a combo of freestyle and random drills for legs and arms and other weird stuff that ensured that i would not be bored), i determined that i should probably be done and i went over and soaked in the hot tub. with a gaggle of old asian men. it was awesome. one or two of them started to emulate my stretching. good times. oh - and swimming feels easier. not easy! just a little easier. i think the upper body changes from circus really make a difference.

and then.... in the shower.... i crashed. i had forgotten about the swim crash! I mean who do I think I am? I haven't swum in how long????? why did I push it when I was just trying to give my muscles a break and stretch out???? but then an idea popped into my head that made it all worth it. i was just completing my mini-triathlon day. yeah. totally. that's all. I biked to work this morning and will bike home. I swam. and I hoofed it a bunch around downtown (ok - that's not exactly running, but work with me here...). so yes. my mini-tri for the day will end up being a 1000 meter swim, a 7 mile bike ride and about a mile of fast walking. now i never need to really do a real one. right? right?????

wow. tired. wow.

1) serafina is amazing and super and fighting with all her little birdie heart and is sleeping next to terfle right now. :)

2) this past weekend was stupidly busy and there was no time to catch up on anything. or call family. sorry. or friends. sorry. grrr. all i want to do is go see Wall-e. and then in about a week i want to see Batman. these are the things i feel like doing. i do not feel like working on lines. i don't want to touch my e-mail inbox. i do not feel like working. i do not feel like being productive. period. and that feels really strange. i have a rather marked lack of ambition. huh. i wanna watch battlestar galactica (this is becoming a common theme, eh?). i wanna play piano for my birdies. i wanna eat yummy food with my friends and drink yummy wine. i'd say that i need a vacation, but supposedly, i just had one. huh. weird.

3) our coraline gig scheduled for this friday seems to be double-booked at the cafe and therefore cancelled. :( actually....to be honest, this is good and bad. it's a bummer as we were putting together some really cool stuff for it and having fun doing so.... but at the same time, i'm kinda excited about having the only two days that I have off from rehearsal this week NOT taken up with something...... wheeeee! maybe I can see Wall-e!!!!! and hopefully they can re-book us. so far none of the dates they offered have worked, but we'll see...

4) i went back to the circus center this morning for basically the first time since streetcar. shit. um. turns out that you don't just magically keep being able to do this stuff. huh. ow. ow. ow. humble-pie sandwich. big time. the arweena is not what she once was. twill be an uphill climb, but i try to remain hopeful.

5) one week til my birthday. :)

confessions of an almost 34 year old.

too busy. so looking forward to this holiday. omigod. need to sit and stare at wall. need to watch more 'battlestar galactica'. need to memorize lines, but do not want to. need to clean clean clean sort sort sort throw out throw out THROW OUT. yeah. that will be good. :)

I cannot even believe it is July. I will be 34 in two weeks. How did that happen? I kinda like 33. 33's been good to me. Yeah. It's been a pretty damn good year. I spent my 33rd birthday sorta in Canada and sorta in Glacier National Park (see blog entry from July of last year for further explanation) smack in the middle of our month long cross-country motorcycle trip and that went right into the crazy Expedition 6-now I have astronaut friends and bill pullman is on my resume and I get to do trapeze for a theatre gig-show at the Magic right into about a kajillion staged readings/yearly mia and dave camping/2 trips to LA for arika and cindy time/LOTS of seeing plays and friends/playing with coraline/circus training 5x a week which morphed into actually starting to teach at the circus center and right into dave and I running away to city hall to get married and right into that equally huge life event that was Streetcar and right into un-wedding/CLL preparations and then the actual west coast AND east coast celebrations and then right off to Hawaii and then right into this new Midsummer show. and road biking. :)

Holy crap.

No wonder I'm tired.

No wonder it feels like there are 10 tons of bricks on top of my body every morning.

Dave weighs like 2 pounds now. He's lost at least one (perhaps two) pants size/s due to all this road biking. He's going to be wearing my pants soon. Hm.

Some unappetizing things that I have learned about myself (some oldies, some rather new): I hate being afraid of things. I hate being bad at things. I hate thinking that someone thinks I'm bad at something. I hate getting up. I fear that I am more self-involved than I wish myself to be. I can actually be quite lazy. I hate it when someone else controls my time. I hate it when I'm low energy. I hate making decisions. I hate upsetting people for any reason at all. I REALLY hate it when people are insensitive and yet I have the ability to be rather nastily insensitive myself. I hate change. I love change. I hate being told what to do. I hate going places where I don't know anyone. I like to be alone WAY more than I think I do. I am often irritated by people that I later realize have the same irritating qualities that I do; it's embarrassing. I am sensitive and needy and moody and cannot lie to save my life. I procrastinate. I am impatient.

Ok. that's enough of that.

Right now I am procrastinating the writing of a letter and the writing of more thank you cards. They make my hand hurt.

Serafina is still with us. :)