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Nov. 24th, 2008 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameI'm doing a lot better for the past week or so.
I credit a combination of realizing WHY I was acting and feeling the way I was before; writing, talking and crying that out to such a degree; and stopping eating sugar and white flour which just helps tremendously with consistent energy levels and mood swings.
I am also aware it could just be temporary, and almost sure I have at least a couple of downswings still coming even if it's not. But, progress.
My main shift has been in trying, very consciously, to live each day to the fullest and keep my heart open. Even if I'm going to die tomorrow, even if everything I do can be undone, etc. I've been crying a lot more easily and often, but also in this very brief and transient and not necessarily sad way, if that makes any sense. I have NOT been having the horrible empty what is the point crying JAGS. I've just been tearing up a lot, half from happiness or empathy or whatever. It's an improvement for sure.
We've had the Book Fair, and the Green Festival, and soccer games, and Knaus Berry Farm, and just lots of good things and good days since I was MISERABLE last. CLean house, meal planning for the first time in forever, generally feeling on track. I made everyone hot chocolate and ginger snaps on their saucers tonight.
I am going to be pitching our tiddlywinks small town newspaper an idea for an ongoing column, in addition to some sample articles in advance. They are often desperate for material, I've written for them without credit before when someone I know was behind on a deadline and it passed through just fine, and I'm not expecting to be paid, so I imagine I am a shoe-in, what with my mother in law working there and all :p She's just in ads and I don't know if she really has any clout, the point is just that I figure it's a good way to pay my dues in the form of getting some publishing credentials in my hand. Then I can start pitching my anecdotal little parenting editorials to relatively low grade publications like Miami Family as "a columnist at the South Dade Newsleader" and THEN I can be a columnist for The South Dade Newsleader and contributor to Miami Family, when I go to pitch my editorial and column ideas to, say, Parents magazine. So after Nancy has my c-section book in her hand in 10 or 11 months, I should be a shoe in for an agent for all this other stuff I have laying around, right? It's good to have a plan, anyway. I am completely prepared to get rejection letters, and to have to edit and re-edit and scrap some ideas - I even have a back-up idea for a different column if the paper doesn't want my initial one - but as long as I eventually get somebody saying yes, I think I can handle it. I understand that even legendary authors had a lot of rejection to wade through before anyone heard them out.
I've been thinking about this writing stuff a lot lately. I won a lot of silly awards in elementary school for writing. I longhand wrote about half of a fictional novel that was mostly descriptive detail about a super fancy house, that my grandfather was typing for me at work, but I got so upset about him editing it without my permission that I quit. Then I got a poem vanity published in an anthology only available to me by purchasing it for $65 (I was 10 and hadn't really understood what I was entering well enough). Once I was about 11, I started writing poetry all the time. I got in the local paper - the tiddylwinks one - in middle school for a play I wrote, and got a ribbon at the Youth Fair for a monologue, and then after a lot of As on essays and great marks on my Florida Writes test and STACKS UPON STACKS of poems, only a few really good but most "alright"...I got swept away in the whirlwind that has been my life ever since. I wrote some term papers for people and did the uncredited writing I mentioned as a favor. I got paid for a press release I wrote for someone once. I wrote a shamefully honest, autobiographical, hysterical fit of a novel when Ananda and Aaron were toddlers. I let a few people read it and they all said they loved it, but they were all my friends.
It's sobering and sort of scary, how close it all seems again now.
My cat died last December. I've blogged about this before...I still get really sad about it sometimes.
I had him for 11 years. I got him as a wild kitten when I was 15, and he was my friend when my mom left me with my grandparents. He put up with any abuse from my kids, and moved to Jacksonville and back with me. It was just really sucky for him to be gone, I was counting on at least 2-3 more years.
So ever since, I've been thinking...I haven't historically been a cat person. I don't always like cats much. I saw Sebastion, MY cat, as being different from all the other stupid cats. He went outside to pee or poop, not needing a nasty old litter box, he was always in good health, never needed to be brushed or washed or anything. He was so smart, learning how to open some doors - he caught flies in his paws sometimes. He understood commands. He did not pee on things or cough hairballs up everywhere. He also came with a lifetime free vet attached (long story).
Anyway. I still get really sad about him dying sometimes. I felt kind of dumb for how much I grieved over a cat last year, irreplaceable though he was, particularly sandwiched in between my bowel resection and my mother's meningitis the way it was.
As time has passed, I've of course periodically wondered if I should get another cat sooner or later. Especially since we got our own house (Grant Sr hates cats, and only let Sebastion come with us because we already had him when we moved in). But, I don't want to have a litter box in the house with the smallest kids who will mess with it, and we don't need vet bills to deal with, and I have too much to worry about already. I'm not sure how they'd interact with the bunnies, and we're already getting CHICKENS in February.
Last night Grant told me he'd considered getting me a kitten for Christmas, but then decided against it. I was kind of thrown that he was open enough to it to consider that, as I'd figured if I ever DID decide to get a cat I'd have to warm him up to the idea...it made me think about the whole thing a lot.
A cat to sit in my lap or at my feet while I'm on the computer at night.
Twine around my feet when I'm cooking.
Purr while I pet it.
It occured to me that Sebastion was a really, REALLY useful thing for me, my stress reduction, my general day to day happiness - I am a somewhat introverted person and a slobbering, jumping dog is way too much for me. But a cat, chilling out as a quiet presence? I really like that. A lot. We could get an enclosed litter box and keep it in the laundry room, like my Nana does. I read up and bunnies and cats usually get along great, especially getting a kitten to introduce to adult rabbits - not to mention they have a house to hide in and their pen will usually be behind A and A's closed door, anyway.
It's just nothing like the feeling of kids that must be talked to, and nurtured and gotten things and taught, near-constantly. It's ok to have a cat sitting there largely ignored while you read a book, at the end of the day, just making you feel less alone in the room.
I went looking around at cats available in our area, online, and fell in love with a litte kitten picture. I mean, KILLING. ME. DEAD. I could care less about a lot of kitten pictures, but this is...different.
Except Grant is totally not into it, saying he THOUGHT about getting me one but decided against it, because he doesn't think it's a good idea. We can't keep the house clean, we can't keep all the plants thriving, we need a part time nanny to help with the kids and even though the money is just sitting in the bank, we forget to pay bills until they're late half the time. We have enough responsibility, renovations we haven't finished, yada yada.
On the one hand, I completely know what he means, and he's totally right.
On the other hand, I truly believe the cat would add a very minimal amount of "labor" that would be more than offset by the reward, for me, and it would rarely effect him at all. I see anything - like, say, Jake or Elise, or soccer, or saying we'll bring the snack for Isaac's AWANA cubbies group, the same way. We DON'T really have the energy or resources for one more child, or activity, or even one-time thing - but we make it happen anyway. It works out in the end. And it's more than worth it everytime.
He has his own set of issues surfacing right now, though, and I think that his anxiety about getting a cat is actually greater than my desire to have one, for now at least. So, I am trying to drop it, and I'm having a hard time, but I'm at least trying to have a hard time in an internal way that doesn't effect him. It's really hard to let go of right now. I had contacted the owner about the kitten via email, just with questions about it and nothing solid, before I realized he was so against the whole thing. Now I'm trying to will myself to end communication, while part of me goes on hoping really hard that Grant'll have a change of heart before it's too late.
These sorts of things make me crazy: conflicts of interest where there is no "fair" way to proceed. Like in this instance, it's not really fair for me to not be able to have a cat I'm going to be responsible for just because he's worried about exagerrated hypotheticals of how hard it could be. I mean, I really feel it would make me happy on a day to day basis in a significant way, and I'm an adult person here.
On the other hand, I HAVE been a mess, he WOULD end up running out for cat food sometime, he WOULD end up smelling the litter box here and there, there would be some point where a cat he did not want living here messed up something that is his, or ours. Or woke him up in the night, or needed to be caught or pulled down from somewhere. I would be spending our money on vet visits and supplies. So I don't really feel it's right to do it without him also being on board.
Whenever we just fundamentally disagree about something, it makes me realize how spoiled we are on never really disagreeing. We don't really know how to do it, when it happens, because it feels new every time.
I credit a combination of realizing WHY I was acting and feeling the way I was before; writing, talking and crying that out to such a degree; and stopping eating sugar and white flour which just helps tremendously with consistent energy levels and mood swings.
I am also aware it could just be temporary, and almost sure I have at least a couple of downswings still coming even if it's not. But, progress.
My main shift has been in trying, very consciously, to live each day to the fullest and keep my heart open. Even if I'm going to die tomorrow, even if everything I do can be undone, etc. I've been crying a lot more easily and often, but also in this very brief and transient and not necessarily sad way, if that makes any sense. I have NOT been having the horrible empty what is the point crying JAGS. I've just been tearing up a lot, half from happiness or empathy or whatever. It's an improvement for sure.
We've had the Book Fair, and the Green Festival, and soccer games, and Knaus Berry Farm, and just lots of good things and good days since I was MISERABLE last. CLean house, meal planning for the first time in forever, generally feeling on track. I made everyone hot chocolate and ginger snaps on their saucers tonight.
I am going to be pitching our tiddlywinks small town newspaper an idea for an ongoing column, in addition to some sample articles in advance. They are often desperate for material, I've written for them without credit before when someone I know was behind on a deadline and it passed through just fine, and I'm not expecting to be paid, so I imagine I am a shoe-in, what with my mother in law working there and all :p She's just in ads and I don't know if she really has any clout, the point is just that I figure it's a good way to pay my dues in the form of getting some publishing credentials in my hand. Then I can start pitching my anecdotal little parenting editorials to relatively low grade publications like Miami Family as "a columnist at the South Dade Newsleader" and THEN I can be a columnist for The South Dade Newsleader and contributor to Miami Family, when I go to pitch my editorial and column ideas to, say, Parents magazine. So after Nancy has my c-section book in her hand in 10 or 11 months, I should be a shoe in for an agent for all this other stuff I have laying around, right? It's good to have a plan, anyway. I am completely prepared to get rejection letters, and to have to edit and re-edit and scrap some ideas - I even have a back-up idea for a different column if the paper doesn't want my initial one - but as long as I eventually get somebody saying yes, I think I can handle it. I understand that even legendary authors had a lot of rejection to wade through before anyone heard them out.
I've been thinking about this writing stuff a lot lately. I won a lot of silly awards in elementary school for writing. I longhand wrote about half of a fictional novel that was mostly descriptive detail about a super fancy house, that my grandfather was typing for me at work, but I got so upset about him editing it without my permission that I quit. Then I got a poem vanity published in an anthology only available to me by purchasing it for $65 (I was 10 and hadn't really understood what I was entering well enough). Once I was about 11, I started writing poetry all the time. I got in the local paper - the tiddylwinks one - in middle school for a play I wrote, and got a ribbon at the Youth Fair for a monologue, and then after a lot of As on essays and great marks on my Florida Writes test and STACKS UPON STACKS of poems, only a few really good but most "alright"...I got swept away in the whirlwind that has been my life ever since. I wrote some term papers for people and did the uncredited writing I mentioned as a favor. I got paid for a press release I wrote for someone once. I wrote a shamefully honest, autobiographical, hysterical fit of a novel when Ananda and Aaron were toddlers. I let a few people read it and they all said they loved it, but they were all my friends.
It's sobering and sort of scary, how close it all seems again now.
My cat died last December. I've blogged about this before...I still get really sad about it sometimes.
I had him for 11 years. I got him as a wild kitten when I was 15, and he was my friend when my mom left me with my grandparents. He put up with any abuse from my kids, and moved to Jacksonville and back with me. It was just really sucky for him to be gone, I was counting on at least 2-3 more years.
So ever since, I've been thinking...I haven't historically been a cat person. I don't always like cats much. I saw Sebastion, MY cat, as being different from all the other stupid cats. He went outside to pee or poop, not needing a nasty old litter box, he was always in good health, never needed to be brushed or washed or anything. He was so smart, learning how to open some doors - he caught flies in his paws sometimes. He understood commands. He did not pee on things or cough hairballs up everywhere. He also came with a lifetime free vet attached (long story).
Anyway. I still get really sad about him dying sometimes. I felt kind of dumb for how much I grieved over a cat last year, irreplaceable though he was, particularly sandwiched in between my bowel resection and my mother's meningitis the way it was.
As time has passed, I've of course periodically wondered if I should get another cat sooner or later. Especially since we got our own house (Grant Sr hates cats, and only let Sebastion come with us because we already had him when we moved in). But, I don't want to have a litter box in the house with the smallest kids who will mess with it, and we don't need vet bills to deal with, and I have too much to worry about already. I'm not sure how they'd interact with the bunnies, and we're already getting CHICKENS in February.
Last night Grant told me he'd considered getting me a kitten for Christmas, but then decided against it. I was kind of thrown that he was open enough to it to consider that, as I'd figured if I ever DID decide to get a cat I'd have to warm him up to the idea...it made me think about the whole thing a lot.
A cat to sit in my lap or at my feet while I'm on the computer at night.
Twine around my feet when I'm cooking.
Purr while I pet it.
It occured to me that Sebastion was a really, REALLY useful thing for me, my stress reduction, my general day to day happiness - I am a somewhat introverted person and a slobbering, jumping dog is way too much for me. But a cat, chilling out as a quiet presence? I really like that. A lot. We could get an enclosed litter box and keep it in the laundry room, like my Nana does. I read up and bunnies and cats usually get along great, especially getting a kitten to introduce to adult rabbits - not to mention they have a house to hide in and their pen will usually be behind A and A's closed door, anyway.
It's just nothing like the feeling of kids that must be talked to, and nurtured and gotten things and taught, near-constantly. It's ok to have a cat sitting there largely ignored while you read a book, at the end of the day, just making you feel less alone in the room.
I went looking around at cats available in our area, online, and fell in love with a litte kitten picture. I mean, KILLING. ME. DEAD. I could care less about a lot of kitten pictures, but this is...different.
Except Grant is totally not into it, saying he THOUGHT about getting me one but decided against it, because he doesn't think it's a good idea. We can't keep the house clean, we can't keep all the plants thriving, we need a part time nanny to help with the kids and even though the money is just sitting in the bank, we forget to pay bills until they're late half the time. We have enough responsibility, renovations we haven't finished, yada yada.
On the one hand, I completely know what he means, and he's totally right.
On the other hand, I truly believe the cat would add a very minimal amount of "labor" that would be more than offset by the reward, for me, and it would rarely effect him at all. I see anything - like, say, Jake or Elise, or soccer, or saying we'll bring the snack for Isaac's AWANA cubbies group, the same way. We DON'T really have the energy or resources for one more child, or activity, or even one-time thing - but we make it happen anyway. It works out in the end. And it's more than worth it everytime.
He has his own set of issues surfacing right now, though, and I think that his anxiety about getting a cat is actually greater than my desire to have one, for now at least. So, I am trying to drop it, and I'm having a hard time, but I'm at least trying to have a hard time in an internal way that doesn't effect him. It's really hard to let go of right now. I had contacted the owner about the kitten via email, just with questions about it and nothing solid, before I realized he was so against the whole thing. Now I'm trying to will myself to end communication, while part of me goes on hoping really hard that Grant'll have a change of heart before it's too late.
These sorts of things make me crazy: conflicts of interest where there is no "fair" way to proceed. Like in this instance, it's not really fair for me to not be able to have a cat I'm going to be responsible for just because he's worried about exagerrated hypotheticals of how hard it could be. I mean, I really feel it would make me happy on a day to day basis in a significant way, and I'm an adult person here.
On the other hand, I HAVE been a mess, he WOULD end up running out for cat food sometime, he WOULD end up smelling the litter box here and there, there would be some point where a cat he did not want living here messed up something that is his, or ours. Or woke him up in the night, or needed to be caught or pulled down from somewhere. I would be spending our money on vet visits and supplies. So I don't really feel it's right to do it without him also being on board.
Whenever we just fundamentally disagree about something, it makes me realize how spoiled we are on never really disagreeing. We don't really know how to do it, when it happens, because it feels new every time.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-24 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 08:02 am (UTC)You can get pet insurance for about $10-$20 a month and that'll cover your emergency vet stuff. We never got it, because our cats have always been quite healthy.
Get the higher quality food and just give them a scoop every day and you're set not only for their extreme health, but because they pretty much handle themselves.
Kittens start in a litter box but will automatically start pooping outside once they spend any significant time out there, and it barely takes any time at all to "train" them to poop out there exclusively (it pretty much only involves spending a week or two moving the box closer to the door before just putting it outside a few days and then disappearing it all together.
Really? No anxiety at all needed. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-25 08:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-26 05:07 am (UTC)Cats are SO MUCH more low maintenance than hermit crabs. Let me tell you. These hermit crabs are a pain in the ASS!