Sepurration Anxiety

On Monday night, I went to find out for sure whether I’m a psychic dreamer or an apnea-tic sleeper (and boy, that sleep study blog post could be a doozy!)  Anyway, that night, for the first time ever, I was separated from my babies.  And by babies, I mean –

Teddy...

...and Decca

The four-legged variety of babies, of course. 

Now, you all know that I was super worried about becoming the neighborhood Crazy Cat Lady.  But friends and family assured me that three cats don’t make a Crazy Cat Lady.  In fact, we actually determined a number – well, it was more of a vehement proclamation.  (Five, in case you were wondering.) 

Here’s the thing, guys – Crazy Cat Lady-ness has nothing to do with the number.  And I’m beginning to think the crazy has arrived.  I’ll let you decide –

When I come home from work, I greet them excitedly and I talk to them like they’re babies (which is weird because I don’t baby-talk to the real baby I hang out with!) 

After reading in an article that slow blinking fostered love and trust between feline and humans, I spent an evening blinking slowly at my kitties.  They just stared at me.  Not blinking.  So, maybe the trust and love is one-sided?   

I bought them an expensive water bowl so they could have filtered water.  I don’t even drink filtered water!

I spend hours playing “Who’s Got Your Paw?  Ouch, I Got Clawed.”  They love it.  At a recent doctor’s appointment, the doctor asked me if I had cats at home.  I’m not sure how he knew. 

I stand at my front door, opening and closing it, so my Teddy can try to catch the sunshine.  He hasn’t caught it yet but he’s trying real hard. 

When I visit my parents, I load the kitties up in their carrier and buckle them up safe and sound in the front seat so they can see me.  This keeps them calm and reduces the hysterical meowing.    

Call me crazy…or maybe just doting.  By the way, I know that I’m not the only doting animal owner out there.  In fact, at a recent lunch my pals and I whipped out our phones and proudly showed pictures of our various pets (between the five of us at the table, we had seven cats and two dogs).  I think mine are the cutest.  And the smartest.  And the funniest.  I swear that I’m not biased.

But the hard part’s coming.  This summer I have four trips planned – all lasting longer than one night away.  So, I’m going to have to leave my little cat-babies.  And I’m freaking out about it.  Don’t get me wrong, they’ll be in excellent hands – the cat-sitters have four cats of their own, not to mention an ACTUAL baby.  They know what they’re doing.  It’s just…I’ve never left them before!

What’s a Crazy Cat Lady to do?!       

Something More

I haven’t posted for a while, folks. There’s a few reasons why but really the long and short of it is that I didn’t want to disappoint you. See, I’ve been out of sorts lately and I wasn’t feeling particularly funny or punny. I’ve been rather complain-y and woe-is-Denise-y and I was really afraid that if I let loose you’d have the same reaction that I have when Taylor Swift comes on the radio – oh no, not her again!

Let’s just get this out of the way first – yes, I should join clubs; yes, I should mingle more; yes, I should go out and meet more people; yes, I should give online dating an actual chance; yes, I should do all of that stuff. You’re right. I only have myself to blame and it’s a blame that I accept whole-heartedly. But the doing is so hard sometimes.

Anyway, back to this weird place that I’ve been in for the past few months. I explained it to a friend the other day – it’s not that I’m not happy. But it’s something. Maybe it’s a longing for something that I still haven’t quite defined. Maybe it’s just a general malaise of the spirit. Or maybe it’s something more. Or the wanting of something more.

Maybe it’s a girl/Barbie thing. Barbie is awesome – she’s everything I can only aspire to be – an astronaut/teacher/veterinarian/gym owner/rock star who lives in her Dream House* with her kid sister named Skipper. Barbie has it all (did I mention her kid sister named Skipper?) I know, I know, I shouldn’t be comparing myself to a 11 inch plastic doll but I’m a Pisces and we’re prone to living in the land of fantasy and make believe. All that aside, when I was a little girl, I kinda thought, well if Barbie can have an extraordinary life, I can too. But then I grew up and realized life is pretty ordinary for most folks (unless you’re a girl named Skipper**).

Or maybe it’s a me thing. I’m just gonna come right out and say it. I spent a huge chunk of my life thinking I was special. When I was growing up, a lot of well-meaning relatives and family friends said so. Well, really, they told me God had a special plan for me. Maybe lots of kids hear this from well-meaning relatives and family friends. But for a long time, I actually believed that God really must’ve had a plan for me and that it was incredibly special. I mean, it certainly explained the whole craniofacial syndrome thing (besides, “God’s special plan” sounds more interesting than having screwy genes). But there never was a special plan. It was just what it was –an unlucky roll of the genetic dice and I’m not any more (or less) special than anyone else. I’m just an ordinary person living an ordinary life.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want ordinary.

I want something more.

I'm just not sure how to get it.

-------

*I never had a Barbie Dream House. I had a regular Barbie house.  My brother added on to it and made it a Dream House.  It was practice for real life!

**For reasons that make sense only to me, I'm very loyal to Skipper.  For a while, I thought she was being overshadowed by Barbie's new siblings and I felt bad for her.  (S.O.S. = Save Our Skipper!) 

Act Like a Kid, Think Like an Adult

On Saturday night, for the first time since I was 10 years old and stopped having them, I had an actual birthday party.  I’m talking cutesie invitations, birthday hats, cake, and ice cream.  All that was missing was Pin the Tail on the Donkey.  Actually, there wouldn’t have been time for that because we were too busy roller skating!  That’s right, I had my birthday party at the local roller skating center.  What?  Your town doesn’t have a roller skating center?!  You don’t know what you’re missing!

Walking through the doors of the Laurel Roller Skating Center was like stepping back in time.  1977, to be exact ‘cause the place probably hasn’t been updated since the days of disco.  I imagine that the skates that my friends and I laced up have been worn by generations of skaters…which only creeped me out later that night when I got home and my kitten took a unnatural interest in my socks. 

Once the skates were laced up, there was only one other thing required.  Absolute vodka courage.  I clung to the side of the wall and thought – oh no, what did I get myself into?  There wasn’t much time to think about anything else because the referee yelled – fast skaters on the outside lanes, slow skaters on the inside!  Okay, there was a little time to think.  It went something like this - &@#%!!!  I need to get into the MIDDLE of the floor?! @#$&! 

Somehow though, I managed to roll out to the middle of the floor, joining my friends who were already skating like the wind.  I took a slow and steady approach because, well, skating is hard work!  And also, I needed a lot of time to plan my exit strategy.  But somewhere along the line, the worry went away and my friends and I were just skating around, acting like kids, without any cares in the world, yelling “Wheeeeeee!” 

It was so much fun!  And we hadn’t even had any ice cream and cake yet!

There were some tumbles though, me included.  Man, when you take a roller skating fall at 33…it hurts a little more than it did when you were in the seventh grade!

That’s why the next morning, I thought like an adult and went to the local emergency room to get an x-ray of my arm (note to self – next time you go roller skating, your butt should break your fall, not your arm!)  Luckily, nothing was broken although they gave me a sling – which oddly, the other kitten has taken an unnatural interest in!

My Sunday morning adventure to the ER didn’t put a damper on my Saturday night roller skating adventure though.  Honestly, Saturday night was the most fun that I’ve had in a long time.  It was kinda like we were all kids again.  Or maybe we’re all still kids inside and they came out to play on Saturday night.

The only problem that I have now – what should I plan for next year’s birthday party?!    

Some of my friends getting their skate on!

The Voice

I really like the show “The Voice”.  Mostly because of Adam Levine.  The voices on the show, they're not bad either. 

I was going through the writing portfolio that contains most of my major writing assignments from middle school through high school.  It’s been a great trip down memory lane and it’s been fun to see my writing progress from loopy fifth grade cursive to dot matrix font in high school.  Oddly, in the early days, there were a lot of references to food, including a Thanksgiving speech in which I was thankful that I could afford to go out to lunch with my mom (some things never change!) and a report on African food that I ended with the closing line – “I hope you enjoyed my report.  Now I’m off to get a snack.”  What???  I still got an “A” though!

When I started reading the papers that I wrote in high school, I began to notice a recurring comment being made by my teachers.  “Your voice is strong.”  “Strong voice.”  “Strong voice but tend to lose focus.”  (She was never one of my favorite teachers anyway.) 

I never thought of myself as having a strong voice.  My voice was quiet, if it was even heard at all.

But maybe sometimes, the quietest voices are the strongest.

Marina and Lee and Me

A couple of weeks ago I read Stephen King’s 11/22/63.  If you haven’t read it yet – and think you might – STOP READING NOW.  I’ll be giving away a few plot lines ‘cause I’m nice like that.  Skip to the end if you don’t want to know about the book! 

Alrighty – only those people who have read or who aren’t ever going to read 11/22/63 should be reading this now.  First off, this isn’t one of those books that you toss in your carry-on to read on the plane – it’s HUGE.  It’s like 845 pages huge!  Now, if it’s on your Kindle, well, no biggie.  But if you actually went to a book store and bought the book – holy moly!  And the 11/22/63 bit of it is maybe about 25 of those pages!  So, definitely not as much assassination as I tend to like in my books!

Here’s the basic premise (which you already know because you read the book, right?) – what if you could go through a rabbit hole, back through time, and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President John F. Kennedy? 

Of course, saving Kennedy won’t be easy because, like so many of us, the past doesn’t like to be changed.  And it’ll do everything in its power to stay the way it’s always been.  So, there are a lot of obstacles (like two facial disfigurements, a beat-down that lands someone in a coma, a bus crash, and on and on) that have to be survived on this quest.  But say you’re successful and you save Kennedy and all of humanity forevermore.  But do you really?  Because see, when the past is changed, so’s the future.  And when you make your trip back through the rabbit hole to 2011, well, Maine’s a province of Canada and things aren’t exactly peachy for the rest of humanity.  The main take away – the past should just stay the past.    

It’s all fiction, of course.  But it’s intriguing because what ifs are always intriguing. 

A few years ago, I met Priscilla Johnson McMillan, the author of the joint biography, Marina and Lee.  Ms. McMillan donated her personal papers to the National Archives and I went to her home in Cambridge, Mass to inventory and box up everything.  Professionally, it was a unique experience – for two and a half days, I worked in a backyard sifting through paper.  Personally, it was amazing.  See, Ms. McMillan happens to be the only person who knew both President Kennedy and Oswald (calling all conspiracy theorists!)  She knew Kennedy when he was a Senator and she later interviewed Oswald when he defected to the Soviet Union.  History certainly has its fair share of strange coincidences, doesn’t it?

There were many times during those couple of days that I stopped and thought what if?  What if Lee Harvey Oswald never defected to the Soviet Union?  What if he defected but decided to live out a long, peaceful life in Minsk with Marina?  What if he wasn’t allowed back into the United States after he decided to un-defect?  What if he never got a job at the Texas School Book Depository?  What if he had a better relationship with his mother?  What if someone had stopped him on November 22, 1963?    

Intriguing, right?  (And as Mr. King so ably proves - great material for a novel!)

Trunk Show

I’ve been feeling guilty because I haven’t posted anything in almost two weeks.  The truth of the matter is that I’ve been up to no good – I’ve been reading books.  Now that that’s out of my system, I can return to writing.  Why can’t I do both at the same time?  Well, there just aren’t enough hours in the day!  And, um, sometimes my brain can’t handle all the words. 

Now, it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. 

He's got junk in his trunk!

It’s not just any elephant, see, it’s the Graduate Study Elephant.  It’s my Graduate Study Elephant.  What the heck’s a Graduate Study Elephant?  Stick around and I’ll tell you.

Way back at the beginning of grad school – at orientation, actually – they gave us a big packet of important papers.  You know the kind – a map of the campus, the course catalog, information about parking permits, instructions on how to use the copiers in the library, the school fight song, and a sheet of phone numbers for mental health professionals to contact when the rigors of grad school pushed you over the edge.  Tucked amongst all those important papers was the Graduate Study Elephant.  You were supposed to color it in as you finished each course – coloring in grad school one block at a time.

Now, I don’t know how many of my classmates actually colored in the Graduate Study Elephant but, me?  I ignored all the rest of the information in the packet and focused on that elephant.  Sure, I didn’t know how to operate the copiers in the library and I couldn’t find the financial aid building for a year and half but who cared about that?  I had my Graduate Study Elephant!

At the beginning of each semester, I wrote in the classes that I was taking in each of the little blocks.  1 semester = 3 classes = 3 blocks.  Except for that semester that I took four classes.  And the summer session that I took two classes. 

 

Looking at my Graduate Study Elephant now is like taking a walk down Graduate School Memory Lane.  There are the course codes that used to roll off my tongue like the alphabet.  There’s the Information Access class in which, upon meeting a girl named Laurel, I said, “Your name’s Laurel and I live in Laurel!”  Introductions are not my strong suit.  Luckily, she didn’t think I was crazy and we’re still friends today. For the record, I still live in Laurel and her name is still, well, Laurel.  Then's there's the Information Structure class – um, the catalog class – that I hated with a passion and for which I almost needed the phone numbers of those mental health professionals (and which now, I’m pretty sure is an example of irony at its best.)  And I can’t forget the management class in which I learned that giving small tokens – such as pens – to staff improves morale (and doesn’t that explain a lot!)  Sorry, I could go on and on…

Anyway, at the end of the semester, as soon as my grades were posted and I knew that I had passed, I diligently colored in the blocks.  After completing three semesters and a summer session, after jumping through the hoops that needed to be jumped through, my Graduate Study Elephant was completely colored in.  And I was an official Master of Library Science (but remember, don’t call me a librarian!)

But what happens when there are no more hoops to jump through?  What happens when there are no more blocks to color in? 

Sure, you end up with a feeling of accomplishment.  Not to mention a colorful elephant. 

Then what? 

I think I need to find something else to color in.    

Beginnings

I met a new guy on Saturday.  He’s very relaxed, absolutely gorgeous, and doesn’t seem bothered by multiple cats.  He also likes to keep people waiting and isn’t much of a conversationalist.  But I guess that’s to be expected when you’re three days old. 

Good friends of mine welcomed their first baby earlier this week.  It is the beginning of a new chapter in their family history.  It’s an exciting and momentous time for them and it’s been fun to watch as they went from being responsible adults to responsible expectant parents to responsible parents of a little human being with a still developing immune system.  

Despite what the dock-side psychic told me this summer, my biological clock seems to be on a permanent snooze.  So, since I’ll probably never experience the joys of my own kids, I think I’m just gonna become an honorary aunt to other people’s kids.  Did you have any of those in your life?  Did your parents have friends – maybe they met in a bowling alley or a Cheesecake Factory or the neighborhood – that you called “aunt” or “uncle” even though they weren’t related to you by blood?  Maybe your family tree was filled with nuts and they outsourced the “aunt” and “uncle” duties.  Maybe you didn’t have actual aunts and uncles so you adopted random people on the street to fill-in the vacant slots.   

Growing up my brother and I had three sets of those kinds of aunts and uncles.  I only ever see my Aunt Connie anymore but I remember the others, especially my Aunt Linda and Uncle Dick who I thought were so cool because they lived in an upside down house – their kitchen was on the second floor!  Following in that tradition, I’m designating myself as “cool honorary Aunt Denise.”    

Now, this isn’t one of those “it takes a village to raise a child” post because, quite frankly, this villager doesn’t know anything about children or motherhood so I’ll just stay away from all that child-rearing business.  But a few months ago, I heard the honorable Judge Marilyn Milian of The People’s Court say “The more people in my kids’ lives who care about them, the better.”  You can’t argue with that logic, can you?  So that’s what I’m going to do – I’m going to be one more person in this new little boy’s life who's there for him and cares about him. 

And now, a personal note to the little guy...

I’ll probably be a nervous wreck around you until you can hold your head up by yourself (even though your mom tells me that I can’t break you, I’m not taking any chances – your dad was a Marine, after all!) I’m going to make you a few promises -

1.       When your parents take you for your daily walk around the neighborhood in your sweet ride of an umbrella stroller, I’ll wave enthusiastically from my house.  Unless I’m napping. 

2.       I’ll watch animated Disney movies with you without musing about the reasons that Donald Duck doesn’t get the same respect that Mickey and Minnie do.  Afterwards, however, I will make you watch “The Jetsons” and I will tell you my theory about hover-craft cars.  My theory being that we should all have them.  Unless we do all have them by that time.

3.       When I travel, I’ll buy you a souvenir tee-shirt.  Because what is cuter than a baby/toddler wearing a tee-shirt with “Someone Who Loves Me Went to the Grand Canyon and All I Got Was This T-Shirt” on it?

4.       I’ll give you full-size candy bars at Halloween.  But only if your dad gets dressed up in a costume. 

5.       When we go out to dinner, I’ll make sure you get a colorful selection of crayons so you can create art on the placemats.  But your mom likes to color, so you’ll have to share with her.  I’m just warning you now. 

6.       I’ll keep the mini fridge in the basement stocked with your favorite juice. 

7.       You’ll always have someone right around the corner who cares about you.  And who’ll totally let you jump on the bed.

In five or ten or 32 years, I’ll probably be just a page in the history of your family, someone who was there at the beginning.  But maybe you’ll think back and remember with fondness your cool honorary Aunt Denise who bought you a ton of souvenir tee-shirts. 

But for now, welcome to the world!  Everyone’s so glad that you’re finally here!