A Sucker for Strays

And the day started thusly: one kiddo wants to ride the bus, the other wants to be dropped off at school so he can sleep in a bit... not too much of a problem there as I have an appointment across from the school at 9am. So 5 minutes before we have to be out the door I decide to scoop the litter box which is now in it's new location, without the benefit of a door to shut it behind. Let me just tell you folks, when I bought this litterbox I went for the absolutely supreme deluxe model. The litterbox not only has a dome over it to hide kittywaste, it also has stairs going up into it, so I don't have to see the kitty poking it's head out making grunty faces. It takes about forty pounds of litter a week, but it's well worth it (or so I thought). So I ask Baby to get me one of those little plastic grocery bags so I can change the litter, but when I lift the dome I see that kitty #2 has been ripping the plastic liner with her wee bitty kitty claws. So I make a split second decision to change the bag also, which means lifting the forty pounds of SOILED litter out of the litterbox, and squeeze it (for security) into the plastic grocery bag. All went well with nary a grain of spillage, so I prepared to heft my load down the stairs, out the door, and into the garbage bin. Luck of all luck! On my way down the stairs (2 minutes before needing to leave the house) the bag broke and about twenty pounds of soiled litter and CLUMPS (you cat owners know what I'm talking about) went merrily rolling themselves down the stairs. With Baby standing not two feet behind me I'm ashamed to say that all I could do was stand there and say SHIT! about a hundred times while the mess unfolded itself in front of me. Now here's the good part; all I could think about while cleaning up this mess was that I finally had something worth blogging about.

Now THAT my friends, is healing.

Halloween... And then there were POP TARTS

I haven't been the best Mom when it comes to Halloween (I've been told by well meaning adults). First of all in Alaska where the kids spent their early years it's too darn cold and dark to go trick or treating. Then there's the fact that I'm not a big fan of candy gorging, and that I hate the idea of begging at the houses of strangers, and then you'll get to why this is the first year the kids have ever gone trick or treating. It started when my Mom had the kids last weekend, and called me asking why they don't have any costumes. I do believe she was horrified when I admitted that I was trying to let Halloween pass by unnoticed. So two costumes later...
It was up to me where to take this beautiful "I don't know" and her gallant knight. So during work on Wednesday I did a google search and realized that everything fun had happened the weekend before Halloween. Just imagine how happy I was as the candy-hating-Mom to see that Whole Foods was handing out things to kids in costume. "I can kill two birds with one stone!" I thought, always trying to do just that. So I raced out of work and dressed the kids up, then tore over to the Whole Foods to parade them around with their free Whole Foods Trick-or-Treat bags. But midway through something happened. I started to feel guilty at trying to short-change the kid's Halloween experience about the time Boo took a sample of grapes from the omni-present Whole Foods sample dome and Baby said (with a mouth full of sample pineapple) "Mommy this is the Best Halloween EVER!". So we went trick or treating in the neighborhood of my dear friend Sara, who actually had troops of trick or treaters tromping around everywhere. I hadn't seen that kind of Halloween activity since I was a kid, so I know I must've hit upon Trick or Treat mecca.

So now we're at today. I've arranged a delightful and healthy breakfast (cherry pop-tarts count as fruit, right?)
Hey... I had to bribe the kids for a day spent moving the sewing room into the office and the office into the sewing room. Hold on kiddos, mama's gonna start sewing again!

It has to happen now, because the kitties are taking over...

The Progress

If there's a new motto to be had, it would be something along the lines of "Do it Yourself Instead of Waiting for Others to Do it For You" or something more poetic but essentially the same. And since that is the new motto, I thought it only right if I re-evaluated my Christmas wishlist to see what I could do for myself... and would ya just LOOK at the results!

1. Treadmill - it's okay Santa, I got this one myself on MONDAY. It's a rickety starter treadmill from Craigslist, but I figure if I have 3 months of walk/jogging on this thing at least 4 days a week without using it as a clothes hanger then I owe it to myself to upgrade...
   
2. Truckload of Partylite Winter Solstice scented candles of all sizes - not much to be done here since the Partylite people saw it in their infinite wisdom to discontinue this scent sometime between now and when my son SOLSTICE was born. Darn it all anyhow! I did try an Ebay search, but then decided that might be a tad bit crazy to become so obsessed with something I was just going to burn. Call me kookie but.... well no, you'd be right. That's kookie.
   
3. A trip to Tahiti - Okay, this one can stay on the list. Let me also interject that a trip ANYWHERE WARM would be welcome Santa, and I already have two weeks of vacation scheduled at Christmas with no place to go. Not hinting or anything, just... well... trying to make things easier.
   
4. An intelligent, funny, sexy man who does not drive a Hummer for pleasure purposes or wear hats made of straw, and would never DREAM of saying "Good Luck finding a man who loves your kids as much as I did" after he has cheated on me. - Yeah, well a girl has to have her standards...
   
5. Enough snow to build a proper snow man, but not so much I can't safely get to work - Take or leave this one Santa, if it doesn't snow I can convince the kids that it snowed inside by ripping up tiny bits of paper and strewing them all over.
   
6. Someone to organize my sewing area, so I can make up for lost time - Yeah, I better not wait around on this one and just tackle it myself. How else can I get Christmas presents for other people done? So I've decided I'm going to take over the former office and turn it into my sewing area. That's my own little gift to myself: that out of a three bedroom house that I pay ALL the rent on I deserve TWO of the bedrooms. Me, mine, NO SHARING. And if one day I meet a man who would like to WOO me away from all of this he will have to prove to me that I can continue to live in the luxury to which I have accustomed myself. Do you hear that futureman? MY OWN SEWING ROOM!
   
7. That all my knitted presents fit everyone they're made for (without me having to fool with knitting a gauge swatch first) - I give up, I've started (after 11 years of knitting) to make gauge swatches. It's a whole new world.
   
8. World Peace - Still on the list
   
9. Hillary Clinton in the White House. NOW! - Still on the list, but I'm considering downgrading to the much more urgent "Just get that man out NOW!"
   

And so there you go, progress can be good for the soul.

I'm grateful for the old friends that keep popping up out of nowhere - first Kyle, then Kristy, Mick, and now Khumokins. You know nothing has been in vain when the boy you had a crush on in 5th grade calls you up out of the blue because you've always been great at talking to each other; the boy you had a crush on when you were 15 wants you to believe you and he can live happily ever after; you hear from the one you never really got a good chance to know because the timing was wrong, and to top it all off you have weekly chats with the best sister-friend that listens to you talk about them all and can laugh and snort and cry and lift you up all the same. And that's what it's all about.

All I Want for Christmas

My DEAR Mother asked me to "start thinking" about what I want for Christmas this year. START thinking?! Oh Mommie, that's ALL I think about these days! And since I have nothing else to blog about, I thought I could share with all my dearest friends here...

1. Treadmill
2. Truckload of Partylite Winter Solstice scented candles of all sizes
3. A trip to Tahiti
4. An intelligent, funny, sexy man who does not drive a Hummer for pleasure purposes or wear hats made of straw, and would never DREAM of saying "Good Luck finding a man who loves your kids as much as I did" after he has cheated on me
5. Enough snow to build a proper snow man, but not so much I can't safely get to work
6. Someone to organize my sewing area, so I can make up for lost time
7. That all my knitted presents fit everyone they're made for (without me having to fool with knitting a gauge swatch first)
8. World Peace
9. Hillary Clinton in the White House. NOW!

Please Forgive Me

It's a week later and there have still been no street performers. As my dear Mother has pointed out however, I have felt much more like dancing. Now, I have to confess that in this mood of merriment I happened to hear the Rocky Theme Song playing, and realized that for most of my life I've had no idea what the singers are saying in that song. I have harnessed the Power of Google, and much to my surprise what they actually say is MUCH (and I mean MUCH) different from what I'd always heard in my head. So for anyone else who has always wondered what they're saying, here it is for the taking:

DeEtta Little & Nelson Pigford - Gonna Fly Now (Theme From "Rocky)

Trying hard now, its so hard now, trying hard now..
Getting strong now, wont be long now, getting strong now..
Gonna fly now, flying high now, gonna fly, fly, fly.

This makes SO much more sense than what I thought, which was the much less appropriate "chinese whore town" repeated over and over again...

-Tasha

What the Heck?

Just had to share my horoscope for the day, courtesy of my crazy friend Sara:

Leo (July 22 - August 22)

This is one of those days when you may be walking along, dear Leo, and all of a sudden there is a street performer on the sidewalk playing music. Suddenly your normal footwear turns into a pair of dancing shoes and you find yourself boogying down the rest of the road. It won't take much to get you groovin', and once you start, it may be hard for you to stop.

- Still no sign of any street performers -

Tasha

Lavender and Codysaurus Rex

The kitties are settling in nicely and taking over the one room they feel comfortable claiming as their territory. For some reason they refuse to go past the doorway of the office, and I'm starting to wonder if they know something I don't know. Sitting here now I watched them both run at a full gallop toward the door and then both stop right at the threshold. They looked out into the hallway for a second and then turned around and ran back in to their kingdom of the office. Now I'm wondering if I should move my bed in here too...?The kitties taking over the office chair...

And now I PROMISE my next blog post will have some exciting pictures of material, for I am going to be embarking on a new project for the first time in a zillion months! A very easy no frills quilt project will be just what the doctor ordered. And wait 'til you see the colors we've picked!

I'm grateful for distractions, Krispity Krunchity, kittens, family, and great kids ("Mom, getting these kittens was the best idea ever!").

Tasha

She's Baaaaaack

I finally uploaded some pictures from the borrowed camera into the computer today, and shocked myself at how much time had passed since I'd written about anything fun here. I missed out on showing you all my new office, complete with fresh flowers I bought for myself...
Gone was the trip to the aquarium on my birthday in August when we had a behind-the-scenes tour from Sarah and saw our very first squid dissection...
And the freezer where they keep the fish food...

the first day of school...

the trip to the fair in September where Travis won at the only game he played, and then had to carry a five foot tall frog through the fairgrounds...

And Sol's first go at being on a soccer team...

And that about catches us up to this weekend, and the new family members. Not one, but TWO cute, cuddly, and rambunctious kittens. A surprise for the kiddos that I don't think they really believed until they'd stayed a full night in the house. These two cuties were found abandoned in an apartment with their emaciated mama and no food or water. The kids have named them Cody (Rex) and Lavender.
And so Fall begins, and we start seeing our family take a new shape. But just so you know... I'm still a DOG person...


I am grateful for new beginnings, great friends, fall colors, hope for the future, playful kittens, and wonderfully amazing kids.

Tasha

The BIG Love

I had a great conversation with a very wise woman today, and I won’t tell you much about her to protect her innocence (ha!). Let me quickly go off on a tangent and say that if it hadn’t been for the wise women in my life, I don’t think I could have made it through the last three months. I hope that whoever you are, and whatever you’re going through, you always have someone wise to point out the little truths that your tears are blinding you from, because if you don’t you will find yourself lost.

And now to today’s nuggets of wisdom. The very wise woman (who I think can peer into people’s souls… not that you always want her to because she will tell you what she sees) told me in a way that bore no discussion, that what I had lost was my “BIG Love”. “The ‘BIG’ Love” she said (she has an Eastern European accent) “is the one that will make you FEEL the most.

"It will make you hurt the most sometimes, and it will make you soar with love sometimes, but you will be FEELING. "I would much rather have a short time of this freezing and burning than an entire lifetime of being lukewarm.”

She said this and it made sense. She doesn’t always make sense you see, but sometimes the sense she makes is so very TRUE, and today was that day. So this was her explanation why after loving and caring so much for a man that had broken my heart three months ago, a man that I continued to wake up next to every day, I finally had enough. She said that the really great ones are the ones that make you so angry that you throw them out in the rain with nothing but the clothes on their backs and you lock the door behind them. And that’s exactly what I did.

“They have to be this way” she said, “because it is with the ‘BIG Love’ that you cannot be friends. "It will end in flames, because this is the way it has to be or your heart will continue to bleed slowly away. "Maybe someday he will be back, but it has to be right or it cannot work.”

And that is the way things have to be. She’s right you know, and I KNOW she’s right. Finally. And according to her, some people never have this great big love that is so powerful and strong that you feel your highest highs and your lowest lows… but I think I may have had it twice, at least. So I guess for all my wishing for a nice quiet life with a picket fence I know that I have always liked to FEEL more, to drink it all in and spit it back out. I remember when I was with Walter, my conversation with my dearest Krispity Krunchity… “I wish he would just get MAD or something, he just wants to do whatever I want to do and it’s so irritating that it makes me want to punch him”. Ah yes… and I married that one. So it is what it is. At least I’m FEELING things, and that’s not such a bad thing after all. "This is how we know we're alive." And to be with a person who is so completely different from the person you fell in love with can't be the right thing to do. As my Brilliant Mother said, "I'm damn proud of you for not seeing how to make ordinary work."

I am SURROUNDED by wise women...

Looking Up

The thing about life is that it's always changing. It may be too late to have a perfect childhood, but it's never too late to become the person you want to be. So that's where it's at. I'm stripping life down to the bare essentials (buh bye toxic "friendships", holey underwear, and making my bed) and working on doing the goofy things I like to do. So I'm going to the fair this weekend and I'm going to ride a ride for the first time since high school, and I'm going to re-read all of my Tom Robbins books (except the ones I don't want to), and I'm going to buy my own flowers for my office every week, and I'm going to listen to all the 80's music I love so much, and I'm going to burn scented candles and take bubble baths and go to bed early. I'm going to be alone for awhile, and I'm going to enjoy it, every minute of it. I'm going to laugh so hard at goofy silly things that I can't hold in the snorts, I'm going to go puddle jumping in the rain, and blow bubbles while on the carousel, and I'm going to be FUN. Because THOSE are the things that define me and say who I am. I am true, real, and good, and I aim to make the world a better place. And that's all I have to say about that.

A Face Like a Chubby Ballerina

So we've been negotiating the realities of this move for the past few weeks now, and there have been some good moments among the bad days. If life were black and white these things would have so much more clarity... a person and their actions would be either all bad or all good, and that would be that. I understand why Hillary Clinton stayed with Bill. And for some reason or another this is how things have tended to go for me. I have never made a clean break, not ever ever ever. This has been the fourth of the major defining relationships in my life, and I have a tattoo to mark the passing of each of the others. My relationships have all burned so brightly that the end never was the end. Gary left for Japan a full year before he finally got the letter from me saying it was over, and he called my mother crying afterwards. Walter left me for Alaska and I followed him to work it out... another year of trying but not trying before I decided we were done. And when it was finally undecidedly over, after the judge declared it over, we sat sobbing together over lunch wishing we'd been stronger people. There was David who brings me so much sadness to think about how that ended. How we knew it was over but stayed in the same house like really bad roommates for months and months. And now this. You think that when you meet that person who you know is your soulmate that the hard work is done. You think nobody in the world has ever found what you have found, and that everything you have is so much better than what everyone else has. You find out one day that everyone is human, and the injustice of it all is overpowering. So that's where we are. The end is in sight but our hearts are still intertwined some days, which is making the pain so much greater. For some reason I have never let go easily, but in the end I've always kept a friend...

Now for my assignment, given to me by Wonderful Sara: heal by making a list of all the things you want next time. Sara assumes there will be a next time, and of course I beg to differ. But just because she said so, here's the beginning of "The List". PLEASE leave me your comments with the things I MUST add...

The perfect man:

Passionate about life

Tall

Sexy

Attentive

Funny

Witty

Good credit

Sensible

Sensitive

Smart

Understanding

Has complete faith in me

Will let me decorate our house

Supportive

Optimistic

Does not drip down the front of the toilet when he goes to the bathroom

Takes care of himself

If he’s gassy, it mustn’t smell
Showers regularly

Keeps fingernails trimmed

Knows how to be goofy

Will look ridiculous if it will make me laugh

Will surprise me with a puppy

Wants to go on DATES with me

Understands the need for fresh flowers

Will take out the garbage

Will appreciate me above all others

Would never ever ever cheat on me

Believes I am the most amazing woman in the world

Will try different foods

Will hold me when I cry, no matter what the reason

Likes avocado and Van Morrison

Will listen to a song and say “that’s how I feel about you”

Will adore Luna and Solstice as much as I do, and always want what’s best for them

Will appreciate going out to eat every once in awhile

Takes care of himself, not bent on self destruction

Has health insurance

Will understand that I want a ring and a thought out proposal, and will know that I’m worth both

Will challenge me sometimes, but only when I deserve it

Understands that I get grouchy when I don’t eat or haven’t had enough sex

Will make sure I always have enough sex

Will talk dirty to me

Wants to hold my hand or be in contact with me constantly

On the NO list:

Cherry Chapstick

I'm Still Here

I have so appreciated the comments I received from my last post; friends I've met and some I've never met both sending love my way as I deal with stuff. I haven't meant to fall off the face of the earth, it's just that sometimes life can take a lot of energy and there's none left to spare. It's September 1st though and right about the 29th of August I decided that I'd had so much bad luck come my way this summer (starting in June) that I had to explore the possibility that I might be doing my own part to perpetuate it. So I sent a message to the universe that I would accept no more bad luck at all after August 31st, and I'm holding the universe to her end of the bargain. I've been hammering out some details and mentally preparing myself as we get ready for Travelous to make his big life-changing career-defining move to Los Angeles, and the kids and I get ready for our own life ahead. It's taken awhile for me and Travis to realize that this was the reason our paths needed to diverge at this point, but supporting this person I love while he follows his dreams has always meant a fair bit of sacrifice. Sometimes this is just the way things go... insert devastatingly sad love song here...

And now I'm putting one foot in front of the other as I try to get things back on track. The kids are back at school in 3 days, and I have a sewing area with a layer of dust on it about two months thick. I'm sure I'll start making my regular appearances here in the blog world, and my list of things to be grateful for will continue to grow. I consider myself to be a very lucky woman even through all of this, because I've spent two wonderful years sharing my world with an amazing AMAZING person. It wasn't the lifetime we thought it would be, but there are never any guarantees in this world are there?

Gratitude: Of course I still have my children, who give me a reason to get out of bed every day; my job has become more wonderful than I could ever have imagined; and I had a really touching e-mail from my Dad (who I've always had a strained relationship with) on my birthday. At this point in my life I have a few more options than I did two years ago, and I know that I can handle anything that comes my way.

"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not." -Lucille Ball