Mamarati

for no good reason. It’s not like I was doing anything productive, because I had a headache from hell from no caffeine. (Although I did sneak a few sips of a Mexican Coke in with dinner… but that’s really just a drop in the bucket of caffeine I generally consume in a day…)

So, I don’t know if that Teeccino stuff does actually offer a natural “lift” or not. I don’t know what it was.

I’m going to Coldwater Creek today, which is not a creek but rather a clothing store. I found a blog post someone had made about it that indicates I will probably like their clothing:

“I know the niche market is 40 yr old female English professors who drive subarus, but who is to say that that won’t be me one day?!“

I’m almost 40. I was going to be an English professor till I changed my mind and now I’m going to be a Librarian. (ooooh, big change there!) And I am a writer… and I used to drive a Subaru. I miss it dreadfully, seat heaters and all…

Anyway, Jacob’s Ness (stepmom) was wearing this cute pink top the other night when I went to hang with Jacob and Jessen… had this tie in the front. Really cute. And then when I went to pick Jacob up yesterday, his math / social studies teacher had on a yellow shirt that was similar and also cute, same tie thing in the front… and I thought, “Where are they getting these cute shirts? I need one!” And then I actually said that exact thing out loud to his teacher and she said she got it at Coldwater Creek and that earlier in the day when Ness had dropped him off at school she said something about the shirt, too. Funny.

Anyway, the deal is, I got rid of all my dress clothes. Remember the purge? So, yeah, they were too small anyway and I haven’t worked in an office (except for my brief time at Citi) for over 12 years. I only kept nice clothes around when I worked at iVillage for those NYC trips and conferences and stuff. Working remotely has its benefits: sweatpants and hoodies.

So, now I’m going to an Austin conference for About.com… finally I can go and so far no one has gotten sick or died to change my plans. It’s casual and all, but my idea of casual is pretty casual and plus I’m getting a new guide photo. Yay. I think my hair has recovered enough from the busted arm-related chopping that I’ll be happy with the shot. And then I’m going to Johnson & Johnson’s Camp Baby in NYC (which has blown up into some nastiness, btw) and I have no idea what the atmosphere there is going to be. Business casual, I’d imagine. So, the point is — I have no clothes for this stuff. I only have my mom clothes. The rest is with the Goodwill.

The other problem with buying a few outfits to wear is that one event is in Austin (where 80+ degree weather has already started) and the other is in NYC (where there have been temps below freezing this last week). Ugh. In fact, I just looked at the weather and it might snow in NYC next week. Joy. So, I guess I will get whatever works down here and take a couple of sweaters with me to the deal up North.

Meanwhile, there’s a big redesign going down and I need to get my ducks in a row for that and if you think I’m caught up with school you’ve lost your mind. Great timing on going out of town. I couldn’t be spread thinner if a steam roller went over me. 50 times. The sad bonus to all this… my kid is in Guatemala. What irony that I’m a bit grateful that my kid is out of town so that I can deal with all this kid-related stuff. I’m also super happy he gets to take this trip because he’s going to see so much interesting stuff and have such a great time. But I have to tell you, when I dropped him off over at his Dad’s house and said Goodbye, I was saying, “HELLO!” to a long, uninterrupted stream of work and school.

Whatever, I’m so over mom guilt. I wish I could take new moms and fast forward their lives about 10 years so they can see that all the stuff they fret about and all that time they spend worrying that they are doing everything wrong is a waste. Guilt is crap. Just slow down and enjoy those years. I know it’s cliche, but it’s true: They grow up so fast.

Besides, there’s so much other guilt in the world to immerse yourself in… Like the guilt of taking one orange mommy cat and her kitten to the vet, finding that they both are sick with FLV (that’s why she was doing that weird little cough and why the kittens were dying) and then having to have them both euthanized. It’s a long story that I have partially drafted, but it’s really so painful I can’t finish. It’s been two weeks now and every night I still think about the sweetness of mama orange thing and just cry. Last night was particularly bad because my neck was hurting so I went for the heating pad… and I had used that pad to keep the kitten warm in the nesting box. So, I just sat there and bawled like a giant baby, thinking about her.

I can’t talk about it any more. I’m going to go get these clothes and then hurry back here so I can read, read and then… read some more.

Jacob made this video Sunday during the birthing.

Description:

Well, we suspected that the stray orange thing we’ve been feeding might be pregnant for a while now. She is just so small, though and I don’t think that we got a good enough look at her while she was still skinny (we started taking care of her in earnest probably right as she went into heat if all the noise outside and strange cats hanging around was any indication).

At any rate, she came inside the other night (Thursday) after I put food on the porch and was acting crazy. Would not leave my side and was my new best friend. She came and laid on the couch between me and my boyfriend (odd!) and we had all the lights out watching LOST. I looked down because she was licking so much and there was a dead little kitten. If she hadn’t been licking like that I would never have known!

For the next three days, she was glued to my side, didn’t eat, didn’t want to go outside, meowing at me a lot… and then Sunday, she had two more. These two were bigger than the first one (which was so small, probably didn’t weigh an ounce) but one was smaller than the other. It’s the one in this movie (she hadn’t birthed the third one yet) and it died last night after much effort to get him warmed up enough to eat. The third one is much stronger and eating well now so maybe he’ll make it. I guess both cats are going to be ours now.

I wish I had taken her to the SPCA, but there are so many cats around here and I never know who belongs where. Nobody tags their cats in my neighborhood. Plus, I have taken a few cats there and they always give me the guilt trip and make me feel like crap that I can’t take care of the 8 bajillion cats around here in my 900 square foot house.

Our “real” cat, of course, never goes outside and is fixed… but in this neighborhood I think that people look at that as weird and unnatural for cats. It aggravates me because this particular cat, not fixed, not flea treated, worms all over her leg fur, showed up at our house and was sleeping on the railing of our chain link fence to get away from the fleas and she had hardly any hair — she was pulling it all out and had scabs all over every inch of her. We went and got some flea stuff but didn’t want to get too involved because we weren’t sure where she belonged.

Anyway, this has been another sad chapter in cat history on our street. Not so sad for my son, however, since he’s been wanting to call Orange Thing ours for a while now and of course he’s wanted a kitten since the dawn of time. I was just hoping we would get to rescue a kitten from Petsmart some Caturday down the road instead of it happening like this. At any rate… cats. They teach you about life, love, death, good times and bad times, don’t they?

lots of stuff going on as usual. I can barely find the time to think. I’m so friggin’ tired. Basically, though:

• flus and colds at both houses
• MRSA at the ex’s house so J was with me without a break for weeks
• hurt my thumb and couldn’t type for a few days
• stomach ailment requiring multiple poo samples from J
• five or six days ? out of school in the last few weeks for J
• stray orange cat gave birth to three kittens either premature or just way too small and two didn’t make it
• the one that made it cries all night and has a hard time finding a nipple and she doesn’t want to take care of it

I am exhausted and behind in school, behind with where I want to be workwise, haven’t been in the mood for any good lovin’ and I’m just generally worn out and grumpy. Having the kittens and worrying about them making it has been stressful. One of them could just not find the nipple at all and had such a weak suck. I think it must have gotten a chill since the mom cat kept leaving them at first. I was worried that she had another one in there.

She literally gave birth to one on the couch sitting between me and my boyfriend and if I hadn’t looked down and seen it I wouldn’t have even known. That was Thursday night. She didn’t have the other two until Sunday!! The whole time inbetween she was acting crazy and was glued to my side, meowing over and over and over. I felt so bad for her although she didn’t seem to be in pain. She was just doing that “talking” meow or that meow they do when you’re getting canned food ready. I’d say something to her and she’d just meow back again and keep meowing at me.

There are not enough hours in the day for all this stuff sometimes.

I will write more later (famous last words) but right now I’ve got to get the rest of my reading done and post some stuff for a group project. My saving grace is that J’s stepmom isn’t working in an office this week and she’s offered to pick him up every day from school this week, so I’m going to blow it out and get caught up. Yay! I’d feel bad about not seeing him except he’s been over here so much with the MRSA stuff being over there, so I know he misses being over there and misses his sister, especially. No guilt. That’s my new mantra. Or credo. Or mission statement. Whatever.

No guilt. I’m tired of guilt for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nothing I do is that friggin’ bad.

I have a lot of reading this semester. I’m only going to be able to see about an inch in front of my face when this is all over. I have to remember to look away. Focus. All those eye exercises you’re supposed to do when you’re on the computer and read too much.

I don’t have much time to make a long post, but let me get some random thoughts out of my head…

There’s been a flu outbreak over at J’s Dad’s house. This is on top of the MRSA that his dad has. I’m not kidding. MRSA.

So, J has been over here hopefully waiting it out. He was sick last week, but it was mainly just sniffles and snot and a headache. He’s about 99 percent better now, so I’m hoping that he will avoid this flu. We’ve had enough illness. Of course, as soon as it’s done over there, J will pick it up at school and then it will go around here. That would be about the Murphy’s Law way, no?

I’m still cold. We figured out the science behind relative humidity and the fact that there is no humidity in this house, relative or otherwise. Now we just have to settle on a humidifier, which we haven’t done. I almost burned up a pot boiling water and of course that’s a huge electricity waster. But that was experimental anyway. We just wanted to see if it would actually make me feel any warmer without changing the thermostat and it did. Bonus: No nosebleeds in a week and my eyeballs don’t feel like crunchy little cheese puff balls. Bad news: Until we purchase a humidifier, I continue to feel frozen and miserable.

I think the stray orange cat that has been hanging around is pregnant. She seemed to be entertaining some noisy suitors in the last couple of weeks and now she’s puking every day and is in love mode 24 / 7. I wish I’d taken her to the SPCA or something, but I kept holding out hope that the neighbors who may or may not be her owners would step up to the plate. I don’t know why I thought this, though, because they don’t even have electricity or running water half the time. Why do I think they can take care of a cat? I just really try to have faith in people when given the chance.

Plus, around here, it’s like cat central. And I never know who owns any cat. Except Hopper because he actually wears his tags and I’ve met his people. But the other cats in the neighborhood roam free and tagless and I never see them emerging from any home or hanging out at any particular place regularly. Truth be told, they all hang out here. So, it’s hard to just say, OK, you’re going to the SPCA so you can go to a good home instead of roaming around here catch as catch can. But like, the grey guy that was hanging around all last year… I thought he was a stray maybe and there were several times I thought about taking him in. Come to find out, he belongs like 10 houses down and around a corner along with 2 other grey cats just like him. I’m glad I didn’t take him.

I have taken a few though, and they’ve all originated from that one cursed house. Just like I believe this orange one did.

More later, I need to go get the boy and mail some of my Amazon stuff off.

Mental note to self, talk about Jacob taking the personality test. Nuts. Completely nuts.

Sometimes I look at my blog drafts and I just laugh my ass off.

I have no idea what I am thinking some days when a topic catches my eye.

Anyway… did I mention that I’m feeling more normal these days? I mean, with my arm and whatnot. I guess I’m going to be all right. I say this and yet I’m not sure I fully believe it. I still recoil at the slightest touch to my arm and am as protective of it as ever. I do realize that it could blow out at some point, but I guess I’m feeling more and more like nothing I do is going to make that happen. I know what it is capable of now. I’m aware of its limits. I think I’m still afraid what someone else might accidentally do to it, however.

The scar is fading a bit, which is nice, I guess. I don’t really care, I suppose. Once in a while I get a reaction out of someone who sees it, not expecting it.

You look at giant scars quite differently after you get one of your own.

I’m busy as ever with school about to start, parenting, work, etc. I started another blog (food related) because I need that like I need another whole in my head. In some way, though, it’s what is consuming my life right now. Food. So I figured I better harness that energy and maybe use it to propel me back into the habit of doing a better job on my other blogs. I fell out of the habit of daily blogging here and at work after the fall and now that I’m feeling better I haven’t had the discipline to get the habit established again. I know part of that has to do with Jacob and everything that’s been going on with him in the last year… but now that he’s starting to see some relief from the surgeries and the allergy shots and the diet… I feel like I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Plus it’s made such a difference in his behavior and his ability to focus at school (meaning no more hours and hours of prodding him to do his homework every single night) so I am finding I have more time to work on “me” things.

It feels kind of awesome, really… if I could just get a groove going again.

–

In other news, I think the orange stray that comes around our house is in heat. She’s running around making all this racket and it has the grey stray (which by the way, I found out isn’t a stray, he actually has a home) and other cats hanging around the house and fighting. Last night at about 2am they started up in the driveway next door and that woke SO up. He was yelling out the window and threw a pitcher of water their way but they still went on and on. We ended up moving Jacob’s air purifier in here so the noise would drown them out.

They were at it again this morning.

I’ve got to catch her and get her to the SPCA.

They probably think I’m nuts, bringing them cats all the time. It makes me feel so bad, but at least they’re going to homes where they will get taken care of instead of depending on the random kindness of the neighborhood. That may or may not be there depending on the day… I told SO that this time he’s going to have to handle it.