Maji the Cat

Sixteen years ago, when I was working as an assistant manager at Motel 6, I was in bed one night when the security guard told me he needed to talk to me (yes, I lived on site). When I opened the door, he told me that he was trying to catch a tiny kitten that he had seen by the freeway. Unfortunately, he was trying to catch the kitten with a donut or something equally lame. I suggested beef jerky and milk and went back to bed. Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the door again. This time he was holding a struggling little brown kitten. "careful! She bites!" he told me. "Nonsense!" I reached out and took the little kitten and cuddled it to me. She settled down immediately and the security guard was pretty disgusted since she had bitten and scratched him more than once. I made the kitten a nest in the bathroom, complete with a make-shift litter box, and some milk, and went back to bed. I spent the next couple of days getting acquainted with her. After there was a minimal amount of trust established, I decided that she needed a bath. Come to find out, she wasn't brown at all but gray and white!

My mother stopped by to visit a couple of weeks later. At that point, Maji was hiding under the bed because she didn't like strangers. My mom (a psychotherapist) crawled under the bed to have a little session with Maji. When she emerged, she announced that my new little kitten had PTSD. Maji never quite got over her distrust of strangers and was very suspicious of people in general until she had a chance to get to know them.

She was my only cat for a couple of years until I was working at Cammar Growers and we wound up trapping a couple of feral kittens. Rambo and Socks are brothers - Rambo came home with me first by a couple of weeks. When Socks arrived, he was pretty panicked in the bathroom so we sent Rambo in to comfort him.

Maji was the alpha cat of the bunch. She distrusted strange cats as well and would greet new arrivals with hisses and posturing.

She was my little house alarm. She usually met me at the door when I arrived home unless something was wrong. Her spot, and everyone knew this, was on the right side of the bed. No one else dared to sleep in her spot. Even me.

When I had my surgery in 2003, she spent hours and hours curled up with me - carefully avoiding the incision. She would sit on the arm of the chair and just purr at me to get better. I could never hope for a better cat.

Three years ago, she was diagnosed with hyper thyroidism and high blood pressure. She had to go on medication twice a day for it. Our lives were ruled by Maji's medicine. She would wait on the bed at 6am and meow imperiously at Roomie until he brought her the medicine, cleverly disguised in soft cat food or baby food. At 6pm she would turn up in the kitchen and meow until we gave her her evening medication.

Six months ago, she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. She was eating about every hour and a half or so. She was constantly hungry. Last weekend it seemed as though she was taking a turn for the worse. She was having difficulty breathing. We took her to the vet on Tuesday and her little lungs were almost completely filled with fluid. There was an analysis done of the fluid they pulled from the lungs and there was a tumor in her lungs. Basically, she was on borrowed time.

On Friday, July 2, 2010, we had her put to sleep. Her last meal was tri-tip and milk. She was in so much pain, she could only lay in one position and she didn't walk so much anymore as totter everywhere. She spent most of her time under the ottoman in the livingroom and she couldn't eat very much anymore. By Friday, you could tell her lungs were filling up again and she was having difficulty breathing. She was down from her original thirteen pounds to six pounds. She knew her time was drawing near because she had spent the two nights prior to Friday, talking to Roomie and visiting with him, something she normally didn't do. I spent most of my time downstairs in the livingroom last week with her.

She hated going to the vet's office. The one thing I remained firm on was that the vet was coming to the house when it was time. I didn't want her last minutes filled with fear. She died in her safe spot, underneath the ottoman in the livingroom. It was a small enough thing to pay the extra bit of money for a house call after all the joy and comfort she gave me throughout her life.

It is so very hard to say goodbye. She came into my life a little ball of fighting fur and she left my life, fighting just as hard. She kept my secrets and listened to my worries and woes for sixteen years. She was cranky, opinionated, and didn't like very many people or cats. And I love her. I haven't slept since Friday because I've spent the last sixteen years sleeping with a pissed off fur coat and it's so very difficult to suddenly realize that the fur coat is no longer there to meow angrily when you accidentally encroach on her side of the bed.

Enjoy the rainbow bridge, Maj. My life was so much more enriched since you came into it, and it's dimmed considerably since you left.

Oh, dear.....

So, it's been awhile since I last posted...almost a year. Many changes! First, Roomie and I are getting married! I am running a second blog about my adventures in wedding planning and my opinions on the whole process (turns out I am QUITE opinionated on the topic).

Let's see, we adopted a dog! River is a german shepherd mix who is about eight years old. When we would go to Petsmart for kitty food and litter, she was always there on the adoption days looking miserable and alone. I finally couldn't take it anymore and insisted she come home with us. We wound up picking her up a couple of weeks later due to our schedules and both of us swear that she knew she was going home with us. She came tearing around the corner with the vet tech and went straight to us. She knew who we were and we had only spent about ten minutes with her previously. She gets separation anxiety if she can't see me after 10 minutes or so.

A semi-feral cat has moved in as well. Her name is Charlotte and we think she almost drowned in the creek out back during one of the big storms over the winter. She is flat out adorable but housebreaking a grown cat is a challenge! Think kitty litter box filled with nothing but dirt...

I have been reviewing my life and the changes I want to make in it. Nothing big or dramatic, but changes nonetheless. I was talking to my sister the other day and said something about how life is not working out how I had planned for it too, and she said how she had never planned hers. I promptly fired back that she also wasn't the one that dated the Young Republican in high school; she dated the football players.

Essentially it boils down to me wanting a more refined and gracious life. I want a life that is well-ordered and orderly. I would like to drive a nice car, one that will last a good long time. One that shouts solidity. I want nicer furniture. I want a nice savings account and emergency account and not have to worry about what will happen if an emergency arises. I don't want to live above my means; I'm not interested in keeping up with the Joneses. I don't want a McMansion - I'm far more interested in making sure that there's enough land to buffer us from the neighbors.

And my first challenge? Planning a wedding that isn't outrageous, doesn't cost the earth, but is still very elegant and nice with enough unique features that will have people oohing and murmuring to each other how clever this or that was. And yet, can't be a cookie-cutter wedding with that horrible chicken plate.

Menu Planning

Roomie and I have decided that we need to start being super frugal - to this end, I have decided to try menu planning. I've tried it in the past where I wrote down a dinner idea on a calendar for the entire month but that usually went dreadfully astray at some point during the month (usually in the first few days) when I would inevitably decide that I did not feel like cooking and would send out for pizza or zip through the drive through.

This time around, I am only planning for a week at a time and only planning dinners. So, I will return on Monday, July 27th (am currently at my mom's house for the weekend) and thus will start next week's planning on Tuesday.

Tuesday - Salsa Chicken with rice
Wednesday - turkey burgers with tater tots and salad
Thursday - my birthday dinner - tbd later.
Friday - Chicken spinach mushroom pizza
Saturday - Rotisserie chicken w/rice a roni and salad

Just checked the weather report and the weather should cooperate with my menu planning - otherwise, would need to revise for menus that do not require turning on the oven and/or stove in a heat wave.

Thoughts on Life and Finances

I LOVE reading personal finance blogs - I'm not sure why but I just flat out adore reading about other people's money. They don't really even have to have any money - I like hearing about how they save the occasional nickel or how and why they decided to spend said nickel. I like reading about other people's frugality and little discoveries they make along their frugal and financial journeys. That said, I'm still not quite ready to make this a personal finance blog - I'm still not ready to bare my debt to all.

I will say that I need to be more in control of my finances and make smarter decisions. I will also say that I want to at least have the land I want to build my dream house on. I know that the house will have to come later but the land can be bought before I move back to North Carolina.

I also want to de-clutter my house more. I need to exercise more. Basically, I think I need to scrape up some self-discipline and commence to spreading it around the various areas of my life. We (Roomie and I) need to eat out less and eat at home a lot more often. And by eating at home, I mean preparing the damn meals at home, not zipping through a drive through and bringing it back to eat at home.

A gym near me is currently offering a summer special - there's another gym that has a better offer but they don't have a pool and I miss swimming. I'm going to have to investigate the gym with the pool. I don't think I could bear to be in a bathing suit in public right now, but at least it would be a goal to work towards.

I may start posting menu plans for the week in an effort to eat at home more. We'll see.

To Do List for 1st Week of March

I've decided it might help me if I had a To Do List to check off the things that need to be done:

1. Copy, sign and mail off tax returns (Completed)
   
2. Brief cases to prep for Contracts midterm (Not applicable)
   
3. Study for Contracts midterm (Completed)
   
4. Organize bedroom (Completed)
   
5. Clean upstairs bathroom
6. Research plane ticket to San Diego (Completed)
   
7. Work on cross-stitch project
8. Send Lori a thank you card (Completed)
   

Let's hope this helps - although I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm leaving something important out.

Updates and Holidays

Yes, it's been a good long while since I last posted and sad to say, I don't really have an excuse as to why I haven't posted. I'm still unemployed and starting to freak out about it. I do have one semester of paralegal school over and done with. Just 24 more units to go and I'll be the proud recipient of a paralegal certificate!

Been struggling with a bit of depression - which makes it super hard to get to the gym where I know I'll feel better but when it's hard to get out of bed in the morning (and I've NEVER been one of those annoyingly chipper people who BOUND out of bed eager to start the day) it's usually an upward struggle from there.

Roomie and I went to see The Nutcracker today. As always, it was beautiful. Normally, I don't even mind the little children that are present. I think it's cute when little girls show up dressed in their little holiday dresses and ask rather loud questions about the plot. Today, however, this little anklebiter kept pounding up and down the stairs that were right by me and I wanted to clobber him. We were in the balcony section (first row) and he and his mother had seats in the last row. For some reason, she felt it would be perfectly acceptable to let her child run up and down the stairs from top to bottom throughout the performance. I restrained myself from saying something for the first half. After intermission, he commenced to once again racing up and down the stairs and started playing with his newly purchased nutcracker right next to me. And then shouted "Mommy?" like he was going to just shout a question at her regardless of the fact that he was in a theater. So I shushed him (you know, shh!) and apparently it freaked the uncontrolled brat so badly he ran back up to his mother and actually stayed there for the rest of the performance!

I don't have any major plans for the holidays - Roomie and I will spend the day together and we're currently arguing about what to have on Christmas dinner. Thoughts?

Job Interviews and Unemployment Frustrations...

Last week I had a job interview that was....let's optimistically call it practice for the future since it was extremely clear I wasn't going to get the job. During the job interview, I could barely get a word in edge-wise as the hiring manager basically kept up a monologue on whatever entered her head. The economy featured prominently in the monologue as she had a talent pool for this position unlike any she'd seen in the past filled with top candidates such as myself due to the recession. And 75% of the applicants for this position had recently been laid-off from their previous jobs due to the economy. Well, that news cheered me to no end. That's just what you want someone to tell you in a job interview. This person also told me flat out that I was "grossly underpaid" at my previous place of employment. Also good news that cheered me. And to cap this 40 minute extravaganza of joyous little tidbits of information, she decided to close the interview with the name of her contact at a temporary agency that I could sign up with for temporary employment. Yeah, she's gonna call back for a second interview.

Roomie and I have been working on redoing the deck in our patio. It's not really a deck, per se, more of a three step staircase that extends halfway around the patio with planters at the end of it. I'll have to post pictures of the finished product soon. The whole goal of this is to make the patio look like something other than the pitiful cement slab that it was. We're hoping to be done with the patio by the end of next weekend. We have paint touchups on the deck to do, a major cleaning and sweeping, re-arranging all of the plants and staking 2 of the forsythia bushes that have decided they want to grow out intstead of up.

This would help so much with my boredom and frustration if I had an outdoor place to retreat to for some sunlight and outdoor time that isn't cluttered with painting supplies, exercise equipment, you name it. I've been on a little "de-cluttering" binge since becoming unemployed. In an effort to conserve gasoline I wound up deciding that while I'm unemployed I would not drive anywhere a minimum of 3 days a week, which essentially means I'm stuck in the house for those 3 days a week. So I need activities to keep me occupied on those days. I started cleaning out my file cabinet and shredding things but that's slow going.

One of my decisions to keep myself occupied is to start catching up on all of my craft-y activities, such as scrapbooking and cross-stitch projects. I've decided to spend a minimum of 2 hours per night on some type of craft in order to make some headway towards getting caught up before I wind up employed again. So far, so good. Last night and tonight I've been dutifully working on my craft projects whilst watching (and this is a tad humiliating to admit) "Big Brother After Dark." I've got another hour to go on tonight's craft before I'm finished for the night.

Another decision that I've recently arrived at is I don't care if I am unemployed, I have to find the money somewhere to continue my personal training sessions. I do so much better with exercising on a schedule if 2 or 3 of those scheduled times I have my trainer kicking my @$$ and telling me to do more reps. My first session is tomorrow. I am totally looking forward to this - I can't wait! Don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those weird exercise fanatics that live to exercise and all that, but I do find that it's easier to keep diabetes under control with regular exercise. And quite frankly, since I've been unemployed, I've been snacking WAY more than I should. Discipline has gone out the window - it's so much easier to be disciplined if you're working!

And since tomorrow I'm leaving the house anyway, I'm also planning on getting my haircut and my nails done for another job interview I have scheduled on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to some pampering that I can't really afford but want to look my best for the interview.