Oh my! Kittens!

I’m allergic to cats. They make my eyes swell painfully and I can’t breathe. But, my allergy is nothing compared to that of my brother and my father. All of us, mother and sister included are allergic to cats. That does not mean I don’t like cats or am not reduced to cooing and stupidly sighing at kittens like the ones playing in my back yard.

A momma cat has set up a home between my house and my ancient neighbors. She was living in their wood pile until Vicky, sweet though ancient, decided to barricade the pile to hopefully force them all to leave. It hasn’t worked, momma cat simply moved herself to my side of the fence, taking refuge under my arborvitaes and kept the kittens in the wood pile.

She made the move a few weeks ago and Sam actually first made the discovery. I let him out and then heard an angry hiss. More than a little convinced that he had stumbled across a raccoon or opossum I rushed out to see if I could interceded before my dog got is ass kicked. All 10 lbs of the momma cat (she is a slight thing) was reared up in panicked ass-kicking mode and Sam was motionless. I shoo-ed him inside and gave Momma cat run of the back yard. For about two weeks she’s been guarding the back entrance to the wood pile and Sam has been giving her a wide berth.

Until I looked out the back yard this morning, I wasn’t sure how many were living in that space. There are three, currently playing between the potted plants on the tables in the back yard. And I don’t know what to do about them. I’m sure they won’t survive the winter and Vicky is sure they are too feral to be taken into the humane society. Animal control offered to catch them, fix them and then bring them back. I have no idea what that would accomplish, I mean besides preventing further litters. I’m not sure how it’s going to keep them alive, as it gets colder. I have an old dog crate, I’m thinking of seeing if I could waterproof the thing and add a blanket. Ugh. These babies are too cute and too skittish.

(This one ran back to the fence as soon as it heard me at the window.)

an obvious lack of compromise

Anyone who reads this blog has seen this room. Either in pictures or in person. I love that I have a "study". I also love that it's this amazing color. I have already expressed my love for the black chalk board paint. The paint in my house is a testament to not having to compromise. It is girlie and if I was sharing this house with someone else it might look more subtle. Then again, maybe not...it's a rather exciting thing to ponder. However, it doesn't change the fact that when/if I ever get married I want to be wearing a dress this color...it's called Altar of Roses.

i need more chalkboard space

Once upon a time, approximately six years (or seven, I can’t figure the math out) I was sitting through new teacher orientation at my very first big girl job. Now, this group of teachers hired by Kitty Hawk that year was impressive, of the approximately seven of us, four of them are still working there and if I hadn’t been so completely over Texas, I’d probably be there as well. I do love middle school and punk Hispanic boys…but I digress. At this particular meeting, which I was actually paying attention to, a function of it being the VERY FIRST teacher meeting I’d ever been to, the man running the meeting, and in charge of getting the new teachers settled in the building was a practicing Buddhist history teacher who wrote a book about something Texas related. I’m digressing again. I remember him talking about being new to teaching and new to the building and how the relationships we’d form would probably grow to be the best friendships we had, built on the commonality of this crazy job.

With all of my 23-year-old sense of superiority, I scoffed at this idea. I had friends, thank you very much. He told us to look around, I looked around, that maybe one person in the room would prove to be among our best friends.

I looked around and wasn’t impressed. I did have, the immense luck of getting a job with someone I had gone to undergraduate and grad school with. I did not know her as an undergraduate, but with seven of us in a program we definitely had spent some time together over the course of my master’s year, but I was much closer to other people in the program. She was okay, a history teacher from a small town in south Texas, I imagined that we had very little in common. I couldn’t foresee becoming friends.

Of course, I was wrong.

Ed Miller, Buddhist history teacher, turned district office worker, where ever you are, you were right. This picture is proof of my wrongness and how right he really was. I made a small tally every time I talked to Erin this summer. I started it when my year was over and stopped when I started up again. I can’t be sure it is correct, that I recorded every two minute call, or call I received when a certain someone was driving north or southbound 35 (because really, is there a better time to call someone?). But, it’s roughly correct, and amuses the shit out of me.

So, here’s to be wrong, especially when it means I got a crazy wonderful friend out of it. And here’s to another school year, my seventh. The plan is to post once a week. Here’s also to grand ambitions.

More fun than a soapy wet

hedgehog?


No smart words, just a cute picture. Work has started; my summer was so good I'm almost okay with that.

Buying a surfboard

I'm in a buying a surfboard sort of mood. Not an actual surfboard but a metaphorical surfboard. The sort of thing that becomes a vehicle of self determination. I met a guy once who had moved to California from the east coast and though by day he was a mild mannered (and very square) accountant, he decided that he wanted to be a surfer and so he bought a surfboard, began surfing and with that simple act became what he wanted to become. Crazy simple.

That's the mood I'm in. Maybe it's the beginning of the school year approaching. Which does signal the end of sloth and a necessary adherence to a schedule, is a new beginning and a sort of freedom that comes with having a schedule. Responsibilities are not inherently bad and I'm almost ready to pick up my fair share again. With that is a responsibility to myself. That's the most exciting (and scary) one. I do love the idea of deciding who and what you want to be and how you want to live your life and then trying to make it happen. And I'm in the sort of mood where I believe in all of it.

I'm going to go do something about the god awful pink bedroom. It's a start.

It was not my intention...

...for any part of this blog to be a forum for me to work out ideas that are currently inhabiting my WAY TOO obsessive brain. But, some of what I'm writing this summer is an attempt to do just that and since my writing and this blog WERE supposed to be supporting one another, I'm posting what I'm writing and writing what I'm thinking about.

So, I don't know if you've heard of the Fat Acceptance movement or the fatosphere, basically a bunch of websites/blogs devoted to reminding people that fat people are in fact people. I read a few of them, I ignore a bunch of it, but much of it ties in with a lot of feminist ideas that i definitely believe in.

So I read this post: http://www.therotund.com/ , the one about Limbo and now I'm thinking... i can hear you "oh god, when will she go back to school and get a life" and the answer to that is, not yet, but soon. (I'm kidding, anyone reading this may roll their eyes at me out of love and but always ridiculously supportive of me, more than I can imagine that i deserve, but more on that later).

But, there are a few parts which bear consideration: (The italicized parts are direct quotes from the post.)

Fuck deserving it. Okay a good starting point. Who decides what we deserve? obviously we do. And the answer we give ourselves is based on a million factors from major (I worked for my degree I deserve to get a job i love) to minor (I look like shit today, of course the checker at the store was a jerk). But, and she goes on to discuss this but, how do we get to that part where we aren't continually judging ourselves.

Questions of what we’re worth, what we deserve…. They seem oddly religious in foundation to me. Or going back to the old reward system. You can only love yourself if you deserve it. I know the ideas of karma i was playing with earlier this summer do not take into account the idea of deserving, in fact that's almost contrary to what i was talking about earlier, but it is related to the idea of projecting an idea of yourself and what you deserve out upon the universe. How often do we overanalyze events in order to find a REASON they took place, and more often than not, we blame ourselves.

The other idea here is that it is a fundamentally religious question. Do we "deserve" love, of a god figure, of a partner, of our friends, of ourselves.....and if we do, how could we possibly believe it. Maybe I am speaking too broadly here. Too generally, but so often self love is so damn hard, the other people in our lives have so much more forgiveness than that which we offer ourselves. And it is so much easier to forgive someone else than ourselves.

She ends with advice: So, here’s my advice for the limbo period: You don’t have to have come to any conclusions, you just have to table the matter. And then treat yourself the way you would if you already loved yourself. Treat yourself well. And kindly. And treat other people the same way. And it will sink in. So, the answer, according to this beautifully written piece, patience and faith. Really? That's it....Oh good, I was hoping it would be easy.

Part of what I like about this post, and some of the equally well thought out and written comments is that it acknowledges that so many people are trying to work out the same ideas and issues. I think framing it in the idea of Fat Acceptance is slightly limiting. It's a human issue, dealing with ourselves and the ugly parts we have a difficult time forgiving. When it is letting go of those labels and living and thinking and writing and being (or whatever your particular thing may be) is the only way we are going to move forward to whatever we might hope to become. and really, the continual process of becoming sort of seems like the most i can hope for.

dog sitting

I just got through dog sitting this super cute pooch, Ru. He and Sam spend so much time together they basically ignore one another's existence. Occasionally, Sam will realize that Ru is much cooler than he, and get pissy and try to tell him what to do. Ru for the most part will just back off and Sam is again content with the world.


Here are the two dogs, Sam in adventure dog mode on the jetty in Astoria and Ru covered in sand after obsessively chasing a stick.