25 Til 30 - Feeling Age

It's a funny concept to me.  "Feeling my age."

I mean, I definitely know I couldn't party as hard as I used to when I was college age or even when I was 25.

These days, it seems like there's less and less time to fit everything I want to do into my schedule.  It always amazes me how quickly my schedule fills up.  As I've been dating around, it's almost laughable how little time I have to actually go on dates. 

Firstly, going to bootcamp is still a top priority for me, which means that I can't stay out too late on weeknights.  Weekends fill up ridiculously fast with social gatherings, practices for shows (did I mention I've got a belly dance recital coming up AND I'm in a production of the Vagina Monologues?), and generally catching up on sleep.

Catching up on sleep is definitely becoming a higher priority.  With the flurry of activity I've gotten myself into, my sleep has suffered.  I spent most of the day on Thursday feeling like a zombie, and I nearly fell asleep every time I rode the T.

I remember seeing my friend's Facebook status updates mention how much earlier they feel like they need to get to bed, blaming it on their 30's.  I've always been a fan of sleeping in, and I'm definitely okay with not having such a packed schedule.

I know that if I have a chance to chill and veg out, I will take that chance.  It not for my mental and physical health, definitely so that I can snuggle with Yoni.

so flippin cute!

Thankful 4 - Kitty Snuggles

In these 4 days before Thanksgiving in a month that has been both taxing and cruel, I want to recognize the blessings that I am privileged to have in my life.

It still amazes me that the kitties can tell when things aren't going as usual.  Strangely, Yoni has taken to sleeping with me, and sleeping ON me.  I love that little kitty-que.  I'm so thankful for her snuggles, even when it wakes me up.

Yoni and her early morning belly rubs

Simple Pleasures Sundays and Day 12 - Kitty Toes

One of my favorite things is when Yoni sits on my lap and cleans her toesies.

Day 7: Yoni Collage

Nature In My Living Room: Kittehs Catch Their First Mouse

I'm about to recall the gruesome death of this poor mouse and then some.  Read at your own risk.

Consider yourself warned.

***************************

At 1 in the morning, I hear Yoni growling and making a noise I had never heard before.  I looked into the hallway to see Mencken in our bedroom doorway and Yoni with her dilated glowing eyes.  It looked like she was heaving.

Out of concern, I thought that perhaps she had vomited or something.  As I proceeded to turn all the lights on, she runs into the living room.  I don't see any vomit anywhere, so I figured she is probably about to puke.

Then I realized she had something in her mouth.  At first, it looked like a leaf.  But then I realized that she had a MOUSE!!!

I immediately work up the boyfriend.  He wanted to make sure that we give a lot of praise to the kitties for catching it.  But Yoni wasn't done with it yet.  In fact, it was still quite alive, if moving slower.

She would growl when Mencken would get close to her, and yet she would drop it and push it about.

This went on for the rest of the night.

At one point, the mouse got away.  I thought I saw it scurry under our front door, but Mencken knew better.  After a bit of digging in our shoe area, he recovered the injured mouse and brought it straight to Yoni.  He, having always been an indoor cat, had never done anything like this and wasn't sure what to do with it.

At another point, they make their way into the bedroom.  It was almost 3 in the morning at this point, and I had to wake up in an hour and a half to get ready for bootcamp.  But I couldn't NOT pay attention to Yoni's growls.  She ended up under the bed at some point.  I was NOT going to be okay with a mouse carcass under our bed!

Here's why:
About 2 years ago, before our kitties were even in this world, we had quite a problem with mice.  They were attacking anything they could, regardless of being sealed in a plastic bag.  I could hear them in our walls, and scurrying about in the middle of the night.  It was horrifying. 

We started putting out traps and putting everything in our fridge.  We cleaned and we even put out some traps with poison in them.

One random Summer day, I noticed these HUGE flies flying around our living room window.  They were HUGE, I tell you.  Huge and slow.  Thus, they were relatively easy to kill.  However, they just kept showing up.  At first, I would see them flying over to the opposite wall, but they were mainly in the window.

I closed our windows and asked our Super to come look.  He couldn't figure it out either, and he hadn't gotten any other complaints from other tenants.

I noticed that the flies had these weird white lines on their thorax.  Naturally, I Googled it.  What I discovered was horrifying.  They were called "flesh flies."  Go ahead, go to the Wikipedia page and learn about them.  I'll wait....

Gross, right??!?!?

Since they were mainly in our window, I figured something must have died right outside it though we couldn't smell anything.

We must have killed over 20 of them.  Yes, I was counting.  It just made it more disgusting.

About a month later, I was cleaning around a pile of clothes and pillows that we were planning to dispose of.  As I lifted a pillow, I spotted a dead mouse!!! It must have been crushed underneath the clothes and pillows.

Suddenly, the stench of dead mouse and the memory of the flesh flies came flooding back.  It was horrifying, and the smell was not going away.

At that point, the boyfriend was picked up by a friend to take him to a birthday lunch.  And I was left with the smell.  I ended up leaving the house with the windows open (though I remember it was a torrential-rainy day), and went to the movie theater.

So, you can see why I was not about to let the cats just leave a dead mouse somewhere for us to find it later.

And I sure as hell wasn't going to take a live mouse and dispose of it myself!  I had already done that a couple of years before the dead mouse/flesh fly episode, when I was living with 2 roommates.

The mouse was stuck on a glue trap, and the most humane way I could think of disposing of it was to kill it quickly.  So, we took it on the glue trap outside in a plastic bag and grabbed a shovel.  My two roommates couldn't do it.  And since I insisted on the quick death, I had to do it.  It took a lot of thinking and yelling, and I'm sure the neighbors were about to call 911 on us.

I was so traumatized by that that I had to talk about it with my work supervisor.  And you better believe that I was re-traumatized by the flesh flies and shared that with my work supervisor as well.

But let me get back to today.
Eventually, the growling stopped and we heard Yoni munching on her cat food.  We assumed that Mencken ate it.

I went to bootcamp and returned to a knocked out boyfriend and kittehs.

But as I was getting ready for a phone interview and the boyfriend was getting ready to leave for school, I spotted the mouse again!  It was barely moving, so I pointed Yoni in its direction.

She took it under or kitchen counter table, and when she reemerged the mouse's body looked truly lifeless.  That's when Yoni started playing with it.  She would toss it in the air and push it about on the floor.

Mencken gets a hold of the mouse

Eventually, Mencken got a hold of it, probably thinking about how fun it looked.  But when he tossed it in the air, it would really catch air.  I was shrieking in my corner behind a blanket, scared that it would get launched in my direction.

But I had to do something.  I couldn't be shrieking during my phone interview!  After asking friends on Facebook, I came up with a plan.

We have way too many tongs, so I grabbed the crappiest one with a stray sock that ended up in our laundry (but wasn't either of ours) and a plastic bag.  After throwing away the bag complete with sock and mouse in our basement, I Wet-Swiffered the hell out of our floors.

I'll be honest.  I think pet mice and pet rats are cute.  They're a lot cleaner, though they still pee and poo everywhere.  But when it's a strange creature invading your home, it becomes a different story.

There was something both frightening and intriguing about the kittehs doing what nature intended them to do.  I couldn't take my eyes away for fear that I would lose track of the mouse, and yet I can't even eat without getting a bit nauseous.

There's a part of me that wants to bathe the kittehs clean, but I know that they do that on their own.  So, I'll just keep washing my own hands throughout the day.  I also made sure to praise them and give them some treats for their good-job-done.  Perhaps we'll feed them some tuna tonight.

If only David Attenborough was narrating, though I don't think that even his calming voice will prevent me from being traumatized from this for a while.

Countdown of 7 Weeks

With about 7 weeks left of 2010, I believe it's time to review my 2010 Goals.

1. Go to Greece in the summer to celebrate my friend's and my 28th birthdays!

Santorini Sunset

2. Adopt 2 kitties with my boyfriend.

Yoni (a.k.a Yoners, Choners, Chonies, Chones)
+
Mencken (a.k.a Mencky, Mencky-poo, Poodles)
=
The boyfriend's and my boodle babies

3. Focus more on being healthy and eating smaller portions rather than the number on the scale.
     I really wish I was doing better on this one.  I do feel like I'm paying a lot more attention to what I'm eating.  However, I recently bought a brand new scale to replace my busted one (it was fluctuating 10+ and 10- lbs!).  It's all high tech and telling me the correct weight as well as my BMI.  I know that I'm building lean muscle, and that is probably affecting the number on the scale.  So, I'm not giving up.  But this goal will probably be continued into 2011.

4. Do some serious purging so that our apartment isn't so cluttered.

This is 2 bags out of now 4 bags!
I got those skinny hangers, and replaced a lot of my old busted hangers
as well as giving away my awesome wooden ones.  Those wooden ones made me
feel like I was finally an adult with an adult closet.
But it also gave me the opportunity to really go through my clothes, try stuff on,
and put aside clothes to bring to a clothing swap this weekend.

5. Learn to let go and move away from things that might be holding me back.
     Still learning this one.  At this point, what with still waiting to hear back about a job I really want, I feel like I can't do too much moving forward.  Everything still feels a bit stagnant.  I do have to say that cleaning out my closet and other sections of our apartment has helped to create some movement.  But I feel like being jobless is actually holding me back.

Alright, then.  I've got 3 out of 5 down.  For the final 7 weeks, I will work harder on my portion sizes, stick to the "1-In 1-Out" Rule, try to sell some things on eBay, and start implementing ideas from my business plan.

7 weeks left.
Ready, set, go!

Kitty Parenthood

With 2 young kittens in our apartment, it's been quite a learning process to say the least.

Our apartment is definitely not kitty proof.  We have tall bookshelves with things on top of it, spaces behind bookshelves and other furniture that they are able to get to including getting behind the fridge (due to the old nature of our kitchen), and our floors and walls are not insulated enough.

Though Yoni is spayed and Mencken was neutered recently, they're still very energetic kitties and mainly in the middle of the night.

The other day, our neighbor below us finally came knocking on our door, complaining about all the noise at 2 in the morning.  We felt horrible that she was being disturbed, so we brought her a bottle of wine the next day as a way to apologize.

But, in truth, it's totally my fault.  I've been hoping that if we get the kitties used to being in the bedroom with us, they won't be so curious about the place.  They get a bit too excited and proceed to start chasing each other around the apartment.  The galloping around the house is pretty crazy for us, so I could only imagine what that's like for our neighbor below us.

I'm also too much of a softy. 

Recently, in the mornings, whenever it's about 8 or 9 am, Mencken will come to our bedroom door and meow and trill and mew and bark.  That's right.  Mencken totally makes bark-like sounds.  It's like he's like, "Hey, humans!  It's been daylight for like 3 hours already!  Get your asses up!" 

It's definitely very different from when Yoni will wake me up by insisting on snuggles.

Morning Snuggles with Yoni

Last night, Mencken just would not stop being a hyper kitty in the middle of the night.  When we put him outside of the bedroom, but Yoni was still inside, he mewed and mewed and mewed.  At one point, I couldn't take it, and opened the door to let him in.  He purred on my stomach, then slowly moved down to the foot of the bed.  Next thing you know, he was up on the window sill, interested in the noises the rain and wind were making.  Then he tried to start playing with Yoni.  We wanted him to be calm.  So, I put him outside again.

I feel like I tried to give him several chances, but he kept acting up.  I honestly don't know how many hours of sleep I got.

Finally, we woke up to a crashing sound.  Mencken had started to climb up our wall-hanging shoe rack and several of the hooks and shoes came crashing down.

*sigh*

I'm sure that there's no way that I can compare last night and the past couple of weeks to being a parent of human children.  But being a parents of kitties has felt really comparable.

Our Little Furrorists.

Simple Pleasures Sundays - Napping

There are those little moments that I'd love to capture in film (or digital film), but I know that if I attempt to do so it would just ruin the moment.

Sunday was full of that.

It's another rainy couple of days here in Boston.  I had woken up pretty early on Saturday, so I wanted to nap after picking up our farm share on Sunday.  It really was a perfect afternoon.

I'm so glad I was able to learn a little bit about napping while I was in Greece.

But this particular day, we left our bedroom door open.  Usually when we sleep, we have to close the door because Mencken is still a bit hyper and will wake us up in the middle of the night.  But today, he was such a good kitty. 

He stretched out next to the boyfriend, and Yoni curled up next to me.  It was perhaps the best nap that I'd had in a while.  You could just feel the love and warmth that was emanating from our bed.

Kitty naps

At that moment, I didn't want anything more.

Dog Lover Transitioning - Part Deux

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am now writing to you from my very own laptop!  Yay!

How fitting that packages that I've been waiting a long time for are finally arriving and my laptop is all fixed and happy (for now) just as Mercury is no long in retrograde, huh?

But onto the post!

**************************

It's May, and I'm pretty proud to say that I'm doing quite well at my 2010 Goals!

Remember this one?

2. Adopt 2 kitties with my boyfriend.

Well, that's another one we can check off the list.

The boyfriend and I officially have 2 kitties!!!

Little baby!

Though we had been planning for 2 kitties, we also felt very settled with Yoni in the house.  It just felt right, and I almost can't imagine what life was like without her.

Then, one Monday not so long ago (the 10th), I was on Craigslist looking for the usual stuff I look for - better apartments than the one we live in, jobs and experiments, and free stuff.  Once in a while, the boyfriend and I would check out the pets section, though we had only tried to pursue one kitten before to no avail.

So, here I was again, searching for kitties in the pet section.  I clicked on the location tab that was closer to where we lived, and suddenly a new listing popped up.

I clicked on it, and there he was.  This little 6 week old black fluffball, the last of his litter to be adopted.  I IMed the link to the boyfriend right away, urging him to call, if only to find out more information.

Within minutes, I receive a call from the boyfriend, saying that we could meet with this woman that day or the next day in a nearby town.  So, we planned to meet with her the next day in the evening.

It felt so surreal.  But it also felt really right.

Tuesday proved to be a long day.  I had a lot on my plate that day, between work, a teleconference call I needed to be on later that evening, and LOST.  But I was so excited and nervous about this new kitty.

We had started reading about how to properly introduce a new kitten into the household.  Though we had faith that our circumstances were working in our favor, we knew that we couldn't be 100% certain until the moment of truth.

As we drove closer to the meeting location, picking up kitty supplies on the way, I could feel myself getting extremely nervous.  I didn't want Yoni to be mad at us.  I wanted her to know that I still love her so much.  I didn't want this new little guy to have a hard time adjusting.  It was almost an intensified fear that I would make a horribly kitty-mama, similar to when we picked up Yoni.

We met this woman and her boyfriend at a Starbucks in Brookline.  The boyfriend had the little kitty in his jacket, and his friend sitting next to him had a little dog in his jacket.  I completely missed the memo on putting an animal in my coat for this meeting, so the boyfriend and I brought our pet carrier.  I realized later that it was the guy alternative to having a purse for a purse rat.

When the woman's boyfriend handed the kitty over to me, I was shocked at how small he was!  But I immediately fell in love.

He meowed, wide-eyed, all the way home.  The boyfriend named him Mencken, after H.L. Mencken.

I felt my anxiety growing even more the closer we got to our apartment.  As we stepped in front of our door, I said to the boyfriend, "This is it.  This is the moment of truth."  And all the advice about introducing a new kitty to an established kitty rushed into my head and flew out the window at the same time.

Initial encounter.

We established that the bedroom would be his safe space, so we set up the pet carrier and his supplies in the bedroom.  Yoni immediately went to sniff him.  She was tentative, unsure of what to make of him.  Thus began a cycle of Yoni sniffing him, batting at him, hissing, and running away.  For the most part, she watched him from the bed or from a distant spot.  But when he would make a strange noise, she would go right up to him and do the sniff-bat-hiss action.

Fuzzball

Things settled, relatively speaking, and Mencken fell asleep in the boyfriends pile of clothes.  Perfect timing for LOST.

Knocked out!

He managed to do enough exploring to know the exact location of the litter box, but we all fell asleep soon after he settled on my boyfriend's side of the bed on his fuzzy rug.

At 3:30 in the morning, I suddenly woke up to a lot of movement.  I thought back to all the times when we introduced a new dog into the house, and how one of our dogs would always try to bite around the necks of the younger ones to show dominance.  I feared the worst.

Once my lights were on, I saw that it was Yoni, playing with the new toy we bought for Mencken.  I peeked under the bed, but I couldn't see him.  The boyfriend woke up, and I told him I couldn't see where he was.  We were both immediately anxious that something horrible had happened.

As the boyfriend looked around the bathroom and living room, I tried calling out to him in the bedroom.  Suddenly, a little black fuzzball crawled our from under the boyfriend's night stand.  He's so tiny, he fit under it!

But now that we were all awake, Yoni wouldn't leave him alone.  Mencken would go behind the bedroom door, and Yoni would try to reach under the door to get to him.  The hissing grew more frequent.  At this point, it was almost 5 in the morning.  The boyfriend said that we should just close the door with Yoni on the other side, but I couldn't bear to think of her being confined even if it was the larger part of the house.  So, I slept on the couch to keep Yoni company.

Do you spot Yoni?

Now, it's been a week since Mencken's been part of the family.  Yoni has taught him how to play chase with her, and he's starting to climb up to the window sill just to "tag" her.  He's extremely playful, almost too much so - especially when he's trying to play with your feet while you make coffee.  He's also working on controlling his legs, but it's hilarious to watch him run somewhat diagonally, like a little drunk man.  We call him a "foot terrorist."  The boyfriend and I love them both so much.

Yoni will still hiss and bat at him once in a while, especially if she's had enough play.  But he's still learning, and so are we.

Meow?

Dream Escapes - Yoni's Owner

I'm feeling like I want to start using this blog as a place to put some of my dreams.

When I used to sleep more, in my younger and less busy days, I frequently had dreams and would often remember them vividly.  There were times when my dreams would hint at some event to come, and there were times when little bits of my dreams would come true.

My best friend/soul sister used to have incredibly vivid and foretelling dreams.  Once, our German Shepherd went missing, and she dreamed that he returned, barking at our front gate.  My father and I were sitting at our dining table, and said how much we would appreciate him now.  About 2 weeks, the exact thing happened.

Now, I like to think that I have my feet on the ground.  But I also believe that there are times when things are unexplainable.

Luckily, my boss also feels the same way.  I love that I can bring a dream to supervision as an agenda item!  She taught me that the best way to interpret a dream (no, not using those dictionaries!) is to figure out exactly what you were feeling in a dream, and find an example in your life where that exact feeling is showing up.  Then, you can ask yourself, if there was something I could have changed about my own actions in the dream, what would I change?

It's a great tool, really.  So, I hope you don't mind that I'm using this space as a part-time dream journal.

******

Let's start with a short one:

All I really remember was that the boyfriend and I were home.  This woman appeared at our door, claiming to be Yoni's (our kitty) owner.  She called her Yoni, though, which I thought was weird that she named the cat what we named her.

As I handed her over, I immediately started to cry.  I couldn't believe that we were willing to just give her back to this woman who lost her in the first place.  

I remember waking up slightly, and crying as I awoke.  I remember feeling like my boyfriend didn't care that we were giving her away, and he didn't care that I was so saddened by it.  

I realized that I had been dreaming, as Yoni lay curled up by our feet.

It's strange really, that I was feeling such anxiety from losing her.  Clearly, my boyfriend and I love her very much and feel very attached to her.  I suppose that I was feeling very alone in my anxiety, which is true, since my boyfriend seemed to brush away my dream as "just an anxiety dream" and nothing more.

But, sometimes I do feel like I'm alone in my anxieties, not necessarily about Yoni.  At work and in general, I feel like there's a lot of burdens being put on me - much of which I know I have to go through on my own, though people are still supportive.

Either way, I do know that my boyfriend and Yoni are constants in my life, and I can turn to their support in the worst of situations.  And if some lady were to come and claim Yoni as hers, she's going to have to fight me for her!