Don’t you sometimes feel that the world is coming at you too fast? The rush of e-mails, ads, news blips, text and phone messages, Twitter, Facebook, and to top it all off, frenetic music coming from your radio or iPod? Are you overloaded and quietly going mad?

Before you start trying on straitjackets, try this: Radio Bach.

A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote that my feathered friend, Buster the parakeet, was in a bad way. Puffy, shivering, peepless, not to mention chirpless, he looked as if he was bound for the Great Birdcage in the Sky.

I feel pretty!

Twice a day, I filled the syringe, then, with a washcloth protecting my hand, chased him around the cage and captured him. At first, when he was sick, he was too weak to resist. But toward the end of the treatments, he was squawking like a bald eagle and fighting like a champ to escape my washcloth trap. I steeled myself to his cries for help and pried his beak open to squirt in a drop or two of medicine. I felt mean, especially since at first, he didn’t seem to be getting better, despite the daily tussle.

But on Day Eight, he chirped once. Hallelujah! This came like a beam of sunshine after a solid week of silence from the normally loquacious little bird. By Day 10, he was chirping, singing, and jumping from perch to perch, rather than sitting there like a little old man with his head low. All was well, thank heavens.

Years ago, I paid about $20 for my pretty green parakeet. He has given me endless pleasure over those years, as he sings cheerily all day in my office. Some would say, “What? You paid $72 for the vet, and more for the meds? Why didn’t you just flush him down the toilet?” To those people, I say, “Would you flush your dog down the toilet if it got sick? No? I thought not.”

Our pets are our children, our brothers and sisters. We don’t abandon them if they need of help. A friend of mine paid more than $1,500 in vet bills for her Siamese cat, whose frightening respiratory symptoms vanished each time he went to the vet. Finally, she said to Calhoun, “Listen, pal. I’ve spent all the money I’m going to on you. You are either going to get better or die.” Kind of tough love, but wonder of wonders, he got better. Tell me they don’t understand what we say.

I don’t know if I’d pay $1,500 to cure Buster, but let’s hope it never comes to that. Today he is singing. And the pleasures of this day are enough for me.

“Please stop! Don’t do any more!”

My client’s voice on the phone sounded frightened and panicked. But that was not unusual. What was, though, was that she was stopping me from working on part of a larger project. I had ambivalent feelings about halting mid-project.

On the one hand, I like big, multi-faceted projects like this one, involving both print and Web writing. (And, of course, the ability to bill hours for research, communications, writing, revising, etc.) But on the other hand, I had a major problem with the project. Namely, that try as I might, I could not understand what the client wanted. This kind of client (of whom I have had few) might be called the “Oracle at Delphi” type.

The Delphic Oracle client

Guess what I'm thinking.

I am a Gemini, which means Mercury, the astral body named after the messenger to the gods, is my ruling planet. So communication is my happy, happy place. I enjoy it. And I’m pretty good at getting the point and making a point, most of the time, anyway. So I feel terrible when, whether because of the client’s or my own failure to communicate (Did you see an image of Strother Martin wearing mirrored aviators just now? I did.) produces less-than-peachy results.

The most important thing (actually, two things) about which I’m unclear: One, am I off my client’s project, or just on this part of it? And two, is the client panicking because of my bill, which I e-mailed on January 1? Oh, there’s a third thing, the most vital of all: Will I get paid?

I imagine I’ll find out soon. Say, can you direct me to the nearest Delphic Oracle? Umm. Maybe I’d better just consult my Magic 8 Ball.

My little feathered companion, Buster the Parakeet, just didn’t look himself last week. Puffed up like a little ball of feathers, his eyelids drooping, he looked miserable. And I didn’t know what to do.

Green parakeet like Buster

The old sure-fire cure of antibiotic in his drinking water failed to un-puff him. And he didn’t seem to be eating, so I gave him a millet spray. He went after it like a millet addict. He denuded one spray in a matter of minutes. So I gave him another. The next day, another. Then, last night, hallelujah! his puffiness had mostly receded. Except… doesn’t his chest still look puffy? Yes, he looked like a puffer pigeon. More research. The closest answer to what might be wrong: sour crop. That sounds awful. It’s like a super tummy-ache caused by food getting stuck in the crop instead of going through. And the cause could be — MILLET! Gack! I was killing my little Buster with kindness!

It all brought back traumatic memories of the time I killed a dear cockatiel by feeding him the wrong diet. It didn’t help that the bird vet (a mean woman indeed) told me the bird’s liver was “the size of Cleveland” and went on a rant about how people don’t know how to feed birds. I told her he liked bird seed, and she said, “Of course he does! It’s like popcorn!” Who knew? I shudder to remember how my beloved Jou-Jou died right in the vet’s hand as I watched. It couldn’t possibly be happening again!

So no more millet, and Buster’s chest looks less puffy today. He actually chirped a few times yesterday, which is a good sign, since he’s normally a little chatterbox and operatic singer all day long.

We’ll see what today brings. I long to hear his pleasant chirpings. They create the happy soundtrack for my workday. Now, if I can just quit doing the wrong thing, I expect I’ll hear it again very soon.

You go, Buster!

When I was visiting at my grandmother Barebo’s house one summer, she demonstrated how to tell a male kitten from a female kitten. Someone had brought a fuzzy little kit and said, “I don’t know if it’s a male or a female.” Mom B. seized the surprised kitten, whipped it upside-down, and peered beneath its tail. “That’s a male,” she declared.

What punctuation is this kitten wearing?

Amazed, I asked, “How do you know?” She replied, “If it’s a male, there’s a colon under its tail. If it’s a female, it’s a semicolon.” Picking up the kitten, I took a look, and sure enough, I saw two black dots punctuating the kitten’s backside.

So now you know how to tell the difference between a boy cat and a girl one by their respective rear-end punctuation marks. But do you know the different uses of those two punctuation marks?

To shift, or not to shift? That is the question.

A semicolon is used at the end of one independent clause to introduce another, related, independent clause. Example: (Hey, that’s one way to use a colon, by the way.) “We gave up waiting in the rain to get in to see the new Kauffman Performing Arts Center; it just wasn’t worth it.”

The semicolon acts as an “almost-period,” but it’s not as final. It signals the end of one thought and the beginning of a related thought, or a further comment on the first thought. It often appears where an “and” or “but” might also have been used.

The semicolon can also be used to separate items in a list that might be confusing if you used commas instead. For example, you might write, “Sally had a list of things to do that day that included taking the car to be washed; having her hair re-dyed (the color it was supposed to be in the first place); and driving Nellie, the poodle pup, to the vet, Dr. Neiman, to be spayed.”

Awwww...

If you wanted to introduce a colon into the mix, you could write:

“Sally had a list of things to do that day: take the car…” and then proceed with the rest of the sentence as shown above, changing the verbs from gerunds to regular verbs (“take” instead of “taking”). The colon in this case says, “Here’s the list.”

The colon also can be used after “following,” as in “To create a username and PIN, do the following:” Other words or phrases that precede the colon include “as follows,” “to-wit,” and other words introducing a list of steps or items.

The colon can be used instead of a comma in a sentence like, “Washington Irving said: ‘…..” Or likewise, it can be substituted for a comma in a formal letter salutation, as in “Dear sir:”

For more uses of these kitty-sex-detecting clues, here’s a good source.

So now, each time you see a kitten, you’ll think of the proper way to use colons and semicolons. Right?

Virginia Barebo Schumacher, 95, of Jefferson City, MO, passed away Thursday, September 29, 2011, at Jefferson City Manor Care Center. She was born February 19, 1916 in O’Fallon, MO, the daughter of the late Millard Andrew and Viola Mary (Kessler) Barebo. Virginia, known to friends as “Dink” for her petite stature, was Charlemo Queen at St. Charles High School in 1933, the year she graduated. On November 23, 1938, in St. Charles, Missouri, she married Roy Edward Schumacher, who preceded her in death in 1986.

A natural singer with a beautiful soprano voice, Virginia at one time sang popular and semi-classical music each week on her own half-hour radio program at St. Louis University. In 1949, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Virginia.

Virginia was a dedicated Christian Scientist who volunteered her time to the church as Music Chairman, Sunday School teacher, and Assistant Clerk. She smiled always, laughed often, and was unfailingly gentle and kind.

She is survived by her daughter, Elizabeth Craig, of Mission, Kansas; one grandson, Jonathan W. Fields, of Shanghai, China; one niece, four grand-nephews and one grand-niece. She was preceded in death by one sister, Mildred Barebo Sebacher, and one brother, Hally Lee Barebo.

In summer, my grandmother’s front yard was always bedecked with various interesting flowers and plants: spider plants, bleeding hearts, daisies, and elephant ears sprouted everywhere, with no apparent order imposed on them. That was because my grandmother wasn’t a planter, but a sprinkler. She would stand on the front porch and throw out handfuls of seeds, and the ones that sprouted became her garden that year.

I’ve noticed, as a writer/proofreader, that there are plenty of writers who use my grandmother’s method of seed-planting to disperse commas. My guess is that not knowing how to plant commas where they’re needed, they sprinkle them around randomly, hoping one or two will land in the right spots.

Well, that’s one way to do it. Not the right way, but it is a way.

There are pages and pages of rules about the use of commas, and it’s useful to read them. But it seems to me you could do middling well, comma-wise, by simply reading aloud what you’ve written, then placing a comma every place you paused for breath or emphasis. Because that’s why commas are there. In the music of prose, commas are the beats and rests between the notes that give the melody shape and purpose.

Too esoteric? If you really want to learn the rules of comma usage, there are plenty of resources online. Here’s one I use when I’m unsure.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to break the rules for the sake of clarity, but it’s useful to know the rules, so you’ll know when you can break them.

I proofread documents for several departments of a national financial services company. When they’re pleased, I’m pleased. Here’s a note I received yesterday:

Thank you, Liz, for the quick turnaround and for the edits you made. Excellent changes!

“Liz Craig is wicked smart and a wizard with words. Do your brand a favor and hire her.”
— Joleen K David on Jul 28, 2011

When I moved to Omaha in 1985, I worked as an Associate Creative Director for 19 hellish months at Bozell & Jacobs. I won’t go into detail, but let me say I was not the only creative there who was suffering the slings and arrows of an outrageous GM who crumbled and ate writers and art directors for breakfast like Frosted Mini-Wheats. Nearly everyone in the creative department was taking Xanax, seeing shrinks, or nurturing ulcers.

So it was a sweet relief to be let go during a mass layoff. My art director partner and I rolled our stuff out to the parking lot in a mail cart, and we laughed and laughed and laughed at our great good fortune to have been set free from whatever ring of Dante’s Inferno we’d been inhabiting.

I took the next couple of months off enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas, and glory be! in January, I got hired at a local ad agency called Smith Kaplan Allen & Reynolds, aka SKAR. My colleague and head of the writers was the kind of woman some women might hate because they’re jealous. A delightfully smart, funny, gorgeous woman named Joleen. I respected her in every way—for her brains, for her client savvy, for her superb strategic thinking and writing, and most of all, for her wacky sense of humor.

These days, we keep in touch via email, and I’ve been back a couple of times to see her and the agency. As the daughter of Wayne Smith, the Smith in Smith Kaplan, now she’s heading up the agency. Under her guidance, the place has been transformed from what was a rather dowdy cubicle city to a cool, sleek, inviting haven for some of the best creatives in the Midwest. Joleen is a natural leader/innovator, and she follows the David Ogilvy philosophy of trying to hire people who are smarter than she is. Which is nearly impossible. But she finds good people and draws the very best out of them.

So thanks, Joleen, for the great recommendation, so many years since I ended my 10-year stint at SKAR., Sometimes I wish I’d stayed, but Kansas City lured me back home, and 15 years and three agencies later, here I am, happily freelancing and recalling the good people and good times at SKAR.

Joleen, I hope you continue to have fun, make money, and always remember me. I’ll remember you, I promise.

“The best way to get a good Google ranking is to blog relevantly and frequently,” I always advise my clients. So imagine how sheepish I feel having ignored my own advice for nearly three weeks. But I have an excuse. Moving.

Multiply by 25.

And not just moving, but casting at least half my belongings overboard beforehand. Have you ever tried to fit 20 pounds into a 5-pound sack? That’s roughly what it’s like moving from a 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with finished basement to a 2-bedroom apartment. Oy! The stuff I have/had/still have/don’t know what to do with!

Who are these people??

At my garage sale before the move, I netted a few hundred bucks. I admire the gritty determination of the people who dragged themselves out to dicker over my lounge chair, rusty wheelbarrow, notepads, plastic cups, lizard squeeze-toy, and various and sundry knickknacks in searing 100-degree heat. There’s no stopping true bargain-hunters when the scent of “cheap stuff” is drifting in the fetid air.

But I still have a trunk full of glassware that’s too good to simply give away, and two sets of beautiful china from my mother and grandmother. When this Saharan heat subsides, I’ll try to sell them at an antique mall. That’s what I did with my mother’s Royal Ruby glassware and gorgeous milk glass. If I’d had the time to market it online, I might have gotten more, but time was the one thing I didn’t have.

As I was fretting over getting rid of hand-me-down furniture from two generations, my boyfriend remarked, “You’re going to have to decide if you want to live in your house or your mother’s or grandmother’s house.” He stunned me with that statement, and he was absolutely right. I’m still wondering what “my house” is going to look like when their stuff is gone.

So I am moved into smaller quarters more appropriate to a carefree single lifestyle, and though I’m still surrounded by boxes whose contents I know not where to put, I am back at work as a freelance writer in the Kansas City area, approximately two miles from where I used to live. Two miles, hundreds of worries, a thousand tears and ten thousand sweat droplets away from a house that always was too big for little me. And now, I am experiencing the joy of freedom! I am liberated from lawn mowing, mulching, snow shoveling, property taxes, weed killing, tree trimming, pruning, and all the other things required to maintain a homestead in suburbia. I have no more lawn-related equipment, having traded my mower to my lawn mowing fellow for three last mows. Ah, what a relief it is!

YippeeYiYea!