I love my husband. Last Thursday night he stopped at the gas station on his way to work. While filling the tank he kept hearing a little mewing noise. After looking several times he discovered the sound was coming from a tiny tortoishell kitten that was scampering around the gas station parking lot. It couldn't have been more than 4 weeks old. He started to pull out of the lot & stopped, looking back at this little thing as it ran around the crowded lot, with diesel puddles all around, 2 busy streets surrounding it, & an expected low temperature of 38 for that night... He couldn't just leave her there to fend for herself. There was no mother around so she was obviously on her own & would probably starve if one of the other hazards didn't take her first. So, he went back & chased her around for a bit, trying to catch her. He ran under a guy's car & started to climb up into it. The owner helped fish her out when Shane told him what was up & he finally caught her, now covered in wiper fluid in addition to gas from the lot. Our vet is only about half a block from the station & although it was 9:30 pm, he'd noticed a light on & so he took the kitten there, not knowing what else to do with her. The cleaning lady was the only one there & didn't know what to do either but informed Shane that one of the staff lived next door. So, he took the kitten to her, explained the story & said he just wanted to make sure she was safe & taken care of. He told her we were going into the vet the following day to pick up Vader after his snip-snip anywway & would check on her & adopt her if need be. The vet worker took her in & said if we didn't adopt her she would. We went in the following day & found out the kitten was infested with fleas & worms but otherwise seemed healthy, plus there was another staff person at the vet standing in line to adopt. That made me feel better about reluctantly letting her go, knowing that at least she'd have a good home to go to. Normally I have no qualms about taking in a sick cat, but those 2 conditions are highlly contagious & with 4 other cats at home to think about, I couldn't see putting them at risk. Plus the idea of giving 5 cats daily flea baths for Goddess knows how long...ugh! Not good! If there were no one else to take her I'd do it, but there were other eager hopefuls so we let those ladies duke it out for themselves. It turns out it was all for the best because we had our hands full with Vader after his surgery. They had to go into his gut to get at a testicle that didn't descend, finding it up near his kidneys. I thought he'd come home with a few stitches but I didn't expect them to traverse his whole belly! So we had to watch him pretty closely to make sure he didn't rip them out & trying tol accimate a new kitten besides would have been nuts. He gets the stitches out next week, so we still have to keep his hyper little butt from bouncing around too much for another week. So my husband saved a furry little life & I couldn't be prouder of him. Someone was watching out for that little girl that night, getting her to safety. We like to think it was our Willow kitty influencing things from the great beyond. Maybe it's even true.
Fall has always been my favorite season, though the last few years I have dreaded its approach because I know winter follows & I get nasty cabin fever. This year started out no different. I watched my flowers fade & started thinking about all I had to do to put the gardens to bed & it made me sad. I was not ready for fall yet. Although this summer sucked, it seemed to go by fast & I feel like I didn't do anything all season. Then I was shopping at good ol' Wal-Mart & saw that their garden center had transformed into their school supply center. Like some of my friends out there, I'm a paper & pen freak & I wished the hell I'd needed to stock up! But since I'm good on that stuff I couldn't justify the expenditure, even though notebooks were 10 for $1.00. *Sigh* But even that made me anxious even as it excited me about the approaching autumn. But then the school supplies made way for the Halloween stuff...& now it's on! Samhain is my favorite holiday, ever since I was little. Hell, I even began menstruating on Halloween when I was 12 (too much info? thought so). So, seeing all the orange & black, all the cheesy masks & costumes made of horrendous materials, row after row of candy, & all the gruesome decorations really flipped a switch in me this year & now I'm like, bring it on! Ideas are flying through my head for activities, costumes, making decorations, scaring the crap out of 5 year-olds, all that wholesome family stuff, & I feel better than I have in months. Nothing like sinister plotting to get the juices flowing & perk up one's mood! The Halloween Express store in Madison is open now & Shane & I stopped in there last weekend. We didn't buy anything but it was fun gawking & playing with the severed heads, eyeballs & fake innards, going, "I want this, & this, & that & those..." This also begins the season when I subsist on nothing but junk food, from here to the end of the year. From now through Halloween it's a strict diet of peanut M&M's, Pepsi & Doritos, not to mention bite sized candy bars. Freaking yummy! So I have plenty to occupy myself with for the next 2 months: sewing costumes, decorating, planning holiday fun, plus all the garden work. Too busy to let my brain stay in a holding pattern over my losses & troubles. At least that's my attitude today, this hour. That may change before I even shut down my computer. But for now, wheeeee!!!!
So, I'm sitting here online & my Google Desktop is running its slide show of the pictures in my folders & one comes up that I'd received via email long ago & had forgotten about. It's title is "You are It!" & it's a picture of a gray & white cat that looks uncannily like my Willow that passed away a month & 1/2 ago in midair,about to land on an unsuspecting black cat that looks uncannily like my new kitten, Vader. This really creeped me out & I had to check to make sure I hadn't taken the picture myself. Then I realized that I couldn't have because I hadn't even met Vader before Willow died. Looking at this intendedly funny picture, the symbolism was not lost on me. It looks like the gray & white kitty is about to touch the black kitty, as if appointing him, choosing him for some task. Shane & I had talked the other day, wondering if Willow chose Vader as his "replacement" & if they'd known each other how they would get along. I think in a way this answers those questions. That's my automatic response to it anyway, but the grieving part of me thinks that this & every other spiritual response to the whole life & death mystery is pure bullshit. I have been having a hard time finding my faith since this tragedy struck our family, not believing in much beyond what I can see because of a lack of physical proof. The thought scares me that I could be losing my faith, as much as the idea of never seeing Willow again. It seems like the passage of time just makes things worse rather than better. I've been seeing all sorts of signs of his continued exsistence & contentment in Nature, my dreams, my divinations, everyday events, but my response is always "yeah, bullshit" It's been so hard & no one really gets it. Shane is always telling me to talk about it, to cry & let it out when I need to but every time I try that he makes one comment & then change the subject, like he's trying to divert my attention. He may mean well but it contraindicates his previous statements & it's not what I need. So, I just don't talk about it, expressing my grief in private writings & when I'm alone. I don't want to burden anyone else with my crap anymore -like I say, I'm on my own in this one. Misery may love company but no one wants to be around you when you're miserable. I can barely get out of bed in the morning much less be around people. & my sister's 30th birthday is on the 10th & I know she'll expect something big from her big sister & she's having a real complex about turning 30 & I think right now the effort would put me into a coma. I don't know how all that's going to pan out. Each day is harder & harder to greet & get through & nothing's any fun anymore. My house doesn't feel like a home. It feels like it's occupied by strangers rather than loved ones. & there's nothing anyone can do about it anyway, nothing they can say will help or be new to me. No, I'm not having self-destructive ideas or anything. I'm not that person. This just blows & I'd rather just close my eyes & have someone tell me when it's over so I can get on with my life. I'm outa here for now.
Don't you hate it when you get pieces of apple peel stuck between your teeth, right where you can't get to it from either side with a toothpick?
I really hate it when people don't put CDs/DVDs back in their proper case & back in their proper space when they're done with them. I'm anal like that. I think I'll throttle my husband
How long can a cat purr for before its purr machine gets sore or tired? Vader was purring for 3 hours straight today while we dozed on the couch.
Don't you hate it when you get a big, painful zit right under your bra strap? Especially when it's got a good, oh... 5 days before it'll be ready to pop
I've become spoiled & far too dependent on my A/C. It's in the 70's out there but I have the air on cuz it's freaking humid
Do you know what I hate? I hate it when you're at the grocery store or Wal-Mart or someplace like that & it's really busy, a high-traffic time, & they have only one ot two lanes open. Cuz then those lines stretch all the way to the back of the store & you stand there for 3 hours before management thinks it might be a good idea to open another lane or two. By that time you've made it to the front of the line & your milk has gone bad. Or maybe you're at the store & you manage to get in a line where there's only one guy ahead of you. You're feeling pretty proud of yourself & your good fortune...then the cashier pulls the cord that sets her light blinking for assistance. Ugh! Cuz you know it's going to be at least 10 minutes before someone who has a vague idea of what they are doing to get there & then another hour to solve the pricing issue, customer payment problem, or to find Gozar the Key Master to open the cash register. Or what about the times when you only need one or two things, you just wanna run in & out & be on your way? But then you get stuck in the line where there's one bozo in front of you & he's going to buy...everything! He's got 5 gallon s of milk, 12 cases of soda, 8 loaves of bread, & the entire soup isle in his cart - he's going to pay with a check! But he's not even going to dig out his checkbook until the cashier tells him the total & then has to do 5 minutes of rummaging to find the proper IDs when requested. & then there are the times when the old lady in front of you in the 8 items-or-less line has 12 items. The cashier never tells these people to get in another line, just lets them go on through - unless it's you, of course. That's when a 6-pack of soda counts as 6 items, right? It's bad enough that on a normal day you stand in line & have to deal with other people's screaming kids, BO & sneezing on the back of your neck, but throw any of these scenarios into the mix & you leave the store in a frothing frenzy. Or is that just me? Just needed to vent
So, after continuous coaxing from friends, I've decided to check out LiveJournal. I've set up an account, set some features & am now just goofing around, checking out the nifty little options, pushing buttons to see what they do (no temporal rifts have opened yet!), that kind of thing. It's going to take some time to learn how this all works. So, some of my posts may seem meaningless or silly for a bit, but they're just "test pages", if you will, to see what happens. So, bear with me as I figure out which end is up!
ecstatic
listless
weird
irritated