Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

I can has hope??

I told myself yesterday "Self, you are not going to stay up late to watch the election coverage. What ever will be will be and staying up will not change anything." Well, Self ended up staying up until nearly 1 a.m. So needless to say, I was dragging said Self out of bed this morning. But, I woke up with a new sense of hope. Change is coming!!

I was so proud to be an American last night. I have never been ashamed of it, per se`. But, actual pride? That hasn't happened in a very long time. Watching the faces of the folks in the crowds in Chicago and New York. The tears, the absolute joy, the astonishment and even the looks of disbelief. The close ups were heart warming, but I was really observing the wide shots. There was one man that struck me. Middle aged, white, thin and tallish, balding with glasses on. He was in the forefront of a crowd shot, when the announcement was made that Obama was now President Elect, his hand went up to his face, and covering his mouth with the tips of his fingers on his right hand, his eyes wide in astonishemnt, then he squeezed his eyes shut and cried. Another crowd shot (several actually) of people just ...hugging, dancing. Total strangers black, white, brown you name it, hugging dancing, laughing, crying. It was beautiful. I wanted to be there. I wanted to hug them all!!!!

I'm happy.

BTW. The image you see above is the newest member of our family. He has not been named yet. Next to him is my size 9 shoe, so you can see how small he is. That's 5, count em' 5 cats.

Kicked in the gut

Beau went to work this morning, like he does every Monday. After he had been there for a couple of hours, he recieved an IM from his supervisor.

They closed his office.

Once again, he is without employment.

4th of the 4th

Steph over at The Incurable Insomniac tagged me for this fun little meme. Go to your 4th photo file and choose the 4th picture, post it and explain what it is. Well, I don't really have photo files, so I went to the 4th page of my mySpace page and found the 4th photo there.

This is a picture of one of my dearest friends Cteev. I believe this is his senior High School pic. Circa 1986. Cteev was one of the original "Bohemites" back in good old Ventura County California. I met Cteev in the summer of 87, "pimping" alcohol outside of a liquor store in Ventura (for those of you unfamilar with the term "pimping"..in this context, it means trying to get someone to buy alcohol for you because you are under 21) Anyway, a couple of weeks later, another friend of mine took me to the house his boyfriend was living in at the time. He was living with a family of 6, plus a few other "street urchins" Lo and behold, there was Cteev, living in the house as well. We became the tightest of friends from there on out. Even going so far as to become engaged. After we broke up, we stayed close, actually I do believe we became even closer. He was one of the loves of my life. Cteev contracted HIV in the late 90's and on October 23rd 2001, a blood clot found its way to his heart, and he lost his battle.

OMG..... it seriously just occured to me.

He died 7 years ago today.

Wow.

A case of the Ruttles

I go to work, I come home, I feed the cats, have dinner,I play video games or I watch T.V. Blather, rinse, repeat.

Then the weekend comes. I feed the cats, do laundry , dishes etc... Have dinner, feed the cats again, Play video games or watch T.V.

I think about weekends while at work, and think about work on the weekends.

Stuck in a serious rut and don't know how to get out of it. I know there are other things I could be, SHOULD be doing. I'm just so drained that I cannot seem to get motivated. I want to come back as a pampered and well loved house cat. Sleep, play, eat, repeat. Yeah, that's the life.

The perils of being a crazy cat lady

So, I have this "pride" of cats that live in the neighborhood. They are here much of the time, because being the crazy cat lady that I am, I feed them, regularly. Every morning, and in the evening when I get home from work, they are there, waiting for me. I don't want to go into how many there are, because I really don't want to see the number myself.

Anyway, last weekend, one of the mother cats (she has 4 kittens) was injured badly.(She is in the picture here, near the center of the photo, the patchwork Calico) We think the back half of her body was run over by a car. She lost the use of her back half entirely. She has been dragging herself around with her front legs only. We called the police, and an officer came to the house, he was going to help us catch her so we could take her to OSU animal hospital. Well, who knew a 2 legged cat could run so damn fast!!! Our neighbor, who feeds them on occasion as well, called Animal Control on Tuesday. Well, even they couldn't catch her. So, she has been dragging herself around like that for an entire week.

My husband, Beau, saw her this morning and called me to let me know she was in the front, dragging herself to bathe in the sunshine. I went out side about 2 hours later, and saw her lying in the grass. Upon closer inspection, I discovered the inevitability that we knew was coming. The poor little mama kitty had died. Heart broken, I found a plastic bag and a small box and lifted her from her happy sunny final resting place and put her empty vessel in the box. Now, she is happy and whole once again and chasing blue-jays under the trees in our backyard. At least, that's what I am telling myself. She was a tough little cat. Over the summer she had been attacked by a hawk and had a big chunk of the front of her neck torn out. I didn't think she would survive that. But she did, and she had 4 cute fluffy mouths to feed shortly thereafter. Her kittens, while not fully weaned, are big enough to eat dry cat food on their own. Thank goodness for that, or I would be nursing kittens around the clock. ( Oh, no, seriously, I would have done it too.) It is emotionally draining to have to clean up the debris left behind by the circle of life, but I had to be strong and take care of it. Then, I had to break the sad news to my neighbor. With tears in his 80 year old eyes, he said "Thank you , friend" I just smiled and told him to take a nap and think about her chasing those damned blue-jays." He smiled and nodded and closed his door, and I walked off with the box and came home. That was about 30 minutes ago.

It's Johnny's birthday.....

Happy Birthday Johnny L. We still miss you.