Category Archives: cats

good friday

The last couple of weeks at work have been an exercise in patience and stamina and so I was absolutely thrilled to bust out of there yesterday afternoon. I cleared the decks sufficiently and am now on Spring Break for ten days.

Michigan weather has been damp and chilly, although I did take a break on my lunch hour earlier this week to visit a sunny, warm spot not so far from where I work. The University of Michigan Matthei Botanical Gardens conservatory was a peaceful place to relax and soak up some rare rays for a few minutes.

I haven’t been taking many lunchtime breaks lately, as I’ve been pretty dedicated to retaining the habit of working out even though I can’t run. I have been off running for 9 weeks now and am starting to cautiously experiment with more weight-bearing workouts. I walked over the weekend, and have been doing more challenging spin sessions, with some standing climbs and intervals. I can definitely feel the weakness in my left leg and know that I will have to be very patient in bringing it back. I don’t plan on running until the end of April but between now and then, I’ll be ramping up my spinning and walking and getting back on the elliptical.

In reading news, I finished ‘Revival’ by Stephen King. He is one of my all time favorite authors – I know how he is regarded in literary circles but there is no one quite like him for taking me by the hand and wholly involving me in a story. I can’t put his books down. Admittedly, I feel his best days are quite behind him – the last book of his that I didn’t feel at least slightly let-down by was ‘Bag of Bones’, and my favorites of his came much earlier than that – ‘The Shining’, ‘The Stand’. ‘Revival’ was okay, but his endings are very patchy for me and always have been. Some endings are wonderful – ‘Salem’s Lot’ and ‘The Shining’ come to mind, ‘Pet Semetary’ and ‘Carrie’ as well – and others are just eye-rolling. The deus ex machina in ‘The Stand’. The kids in ‘It’.

I’m now reading ‘The Luminaries’ by Eleanor Catton and am not sure I can hang with it. It’s oddly interesting in a stiff sort of way, but it hasn’t caught me yet, and a book of that length will require some spark of passion to push me through. I haven’t given up yet, though.

I just finished listening to ‘The Buried Giant’ by Kazuo Ishiguro (I bought is as an Audible book) and it was wonderful. The end of it made me weepy; the marital relationship depicted is one that I have pretty much given up hope that I will ever have in my life. I generally understand that my path is taking me in different directions, and I am content with the journey I’m on, but that loss is still a little melancholy at times. Anyway, I digress – in keeping with the Arthurian theme, I’ve just acquired ‘The Crystal Cove’ on Audible for my commutes and workouts, and am enjoying that as well.

Apparently April is going to be quite a rollercoaster ride. My dreams have been off the hook nutty this week, filled with unexpected messages from my subconscious. I’ve dreamed in great detail about a mentor that I’m worried about, received a warning about another friend, and identified an area of lingering aggression. Regardless of how some people roll their eyes at dreams, they are a deep way that your mind speaks to itself, and processes events and relationships that your top-level mind can’t or doesn’t want to address, and for that reason alone, they are worth paying attention to.

Even the boys are feeling unsettled.

Sometimes telling them sternly to ‘love each other!!’ does no good.

So the long weekend is dedicated to relaxing with family – and on Monday, three for the road (more to come, she said mysteriously).

For the last few years, I’ve reserved Good Friday as a day of peace, baking and starting garden seeds, and today will be no different. The little one & I may try our hand at hot cross buns and I am sure there will be pictures. I hope wherever you are and whatever faith you hold, you are with people you love and are loved by. xoxo

bullet point blogging and a couple of pictures.

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My vacuum cleaner died so I have purchased a new one and it has yet to arrive. (I could have gone to a big store and just bought a new one but now that I have Amazon Prime I am thrilled at the variety of things that my lazy ass can have delivered right to my door with free shipping.) It is amazing how gross the floors of a house can get when one’s vacuum is not in working order. Every day that I come home to find no large familiar brown box on my front porch is another day that my house gets closer to complete anarchy.
I continue to fight the fitness battle on a strict regimen of no running. This is driving me simply insane. I have long known about myself that limiting my eating is just never going to happen and I just don’t burn the same calories laboring away on a stationary bike or doing Tony Horton 10-Minute Trainer segments. I know that I am staying in shape doing different kinds of things but the lack of cardio is killing me. I will hopefully be back to the elliptical in early April and by the end of April I can start run / walking again.
In the meantime, three or four lunch hours a week, I ride the stationary bike in my office workout room. I subscribed to Audible and am listening to “The Buried Giant” by Kazuo Ishiguro during my exercise time, which makes that break in my workday strangely magical.
It’s funny how things work. I have also been meditating much more regularly and it struck me that if I hadn’t taken a long break from running, I probably wouldn’t have picked up meditating with such a fervor, or started listening to the book to make a horribly dull and extra long workout interesting. One thing leads to another. I am missing that endorphin rush and have had to make substitutions, which have turned out to be healthy in other ways.
I have promised myself a set of wireless headphones, a fitness holder for my iPhone, and a new pair of PowerStep insoles if I can wait until the end of April to start running again. This is no joke. Whenever I get off that stupid bike I look at the treadmill and think, I could just run a mile and I’m sure everything would be okay. So far I have resisted but it is painful seeing the weather warm up and the streets and roads become more populated with runners.
Took a trip to Indiana earlier this week to give a presentation about compliance to a room full of people who looked like they would rather be doing anything other than hearing me speak. There was nothing I could do to elicit even mild interest from their stony faces so I gave up trying on the second slide and just pushed through.

They get very passive aggressive when the suitcase comes out.

Anyway, it was a great 8+ hour round trip with our Assistant General Counsel who is a fun travel companion. We get up in the mornings to work out together and I made her eat at a Cracker Barrel across the highway from a water tower emblazoned with the words GAS CITY. I should have taken a picture of her to memorialize the event since I doubt she will ever go back.
I hope everyone has a lovely Sunday. xo

Yesterday was #caturday on Instagram and Sarge was our go-to guy.

in which we give in to the faux bengal, and I mediate.

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Emmett is the cat who, whenever anyone gets near the front door, immediately rushes over and begins singing the song of his people, demanding to be LET OUT. He bum rushes whenever the door is even slightly cracked and jumps on people coming in and has slipped past our security protocols more than once. The big wide world is fascinating to him and I always feel slightly sad that our belief systems diverge so dramatically on this point – I don’t let my cats out. It is too dangerous out there for them, and for the songbird populations. But I can’t imagine living an entire life inside the same house. Emmett is smart and easily bored and so Miss L and I determined that a compromise could be reached.

We procured him a tiny harness and leash (note the skull and crossbones). And despite the cold weather lately, Emmett has been learning how to navigate with us.

We don’t stray far, sticking close to the house.

Emmett has adjusted quickly, but he still doesn’t like cold wet paws, or walking on ice. And he doesn’t walk like a dog would walk – he basically roams and explores and sniffs a lot and we just hold the leash and ensure that he stays out of trouble. One of Miss L’s lunch ladies apparently drove by and saw us out walking the cat, and it spread around her lunchroom pretty quickly. The neighbors are completely nonplussed and we get some pretty strange looks when we are out with him.

It doesn’t bother us.

In other news, I completed my 40 hours of court approved general civil mediation training yesterday. I was the only non-lawyer in the class of 30 (except for a handful of University of Michigan 3Ls) and one of my classmates was a circuit court judge. Most everyone had either attended a mediation or an arbitration, and in many cases, had actually conducted them. I worked really hard to keep up, and prepped hard for all of the role plays. I typically detest role playing in a training class but these were exceptionally good and everyone took their role playing very seriously (one of my classmates even wept when she took on the role of a plaintiff in a med mal case who had lost her leg in a botched surgery). My classmates were wonderful and I had a couple of proud moments – the first when one of my classmates announced to the assembled class, “She just proved to me that you don’t need to be a lawyer to be good at this!” and one during my final exam mediation when the well-respected personal injury attorney who was observing me said, “I KNOW this isn’t your first mediation!” (It was.)

One of the 3L’s messed me up during my final exam mediation and I wasn’t happy about it, because we all tried to support each other and help each other succeed in front of the outside coaches and observers, on that last critical day. But I tried to gamely fight through it and ended up mediating the dispute to an inelegant settlement, which was vastly more than I’d hoped for.

I am now at the stage in which, if I were going to pursue it, I would volunteer at a dispute resolution center and observe a mediation, then conduct a couple on my own. Once I complete those steps, I could be added to the court rosters of any Michigan county – you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a court rostered mediator in this state. I’m just not sure I want to take those steps. It’s a nice opportunity, if I pursued it gamely, but it’s also a huge responsibility. And on top of my full time paid job and Miss L, I’m not sure I have room for a third major commitment. But I haven’t finished noodling it.

Whenever I write that I am in ‘mediation’ training, in emails or on social media, someone invariably misreads it and thinks I am in ‘meditation’ training. Which is funny because I recently started meditating again, in short increments a few times a week. During the training, the topic of stress came up, and one of my classmates was put on the spot to discuss how he dealt with it. This particular classmate was pretty scruffy looking and when everyone else was in suits, he wore jeans and rumpled blazers and pilled sweaters. Yet he had an undeniable aura of calm, focus, and serenity – it literally radiated when he spoke. So when he said that he meditated, it honestly didn’t surprise me at all. I talked to him after the class and he said he’s been meditating for ten years and it has literally changed his life. He lost forty pounds and was able to stop taking a blood pressure medication based solely on the positive influence of meditation. He goes to a retreat or a seminar once a year, and meditates for thirty minutes a day, every day. And this is a litigator with a successful practice, a marriage, and five children. Clearly, if he can fit it in, I can, as well.

Besides, I have the advantage of an excellent role model.

mostly catch up.

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Every January and February, I lose my voice. I’ve noticed this phenomenon for the past several years. During the long, dark, cold days of winter, I pull back from interactions. I’m not mad or sad or depressed, really, at least not that I can identify; I just seem to need more quiet, alone time to recharge my batteries to get through the daily work. I don’t blog or write or talk to friends or family as much. I am just quiet and waiting for the sun to return, and with it, my voice.

Still, there is a lot that’s happened since the last time I blogged, so here is a quick round-up of life in suburban Elysium, mostly in pictures.

Brutally cold temperatures have forced school cancellations. Cabin fever sets in, and so I try to get Miss L out whenever the weather breaks for a short time. Fresh air, activity. Here is our take on the Stranger in the Woods – we call it Weirdos in the Backyard.

I’m trying hard to keep my backyard birds fed and watered. I resurrected the old heated birdbath that never had a proper pedestal, and put it on my patio table. It isn’t as popular as I would like, but I do try to make sure it always has a little water in it and it has worked admirably well at keeping it unfrozen, even during the coldest nights here. Many chickadees, finches of different types, dark eyed juncos, a pair of cardinals, white breasted nuthatch, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and the usual plague of house sparrows have been spotted.

Kensington Metropark is still our favorite place to wander, and feed birds by hand. One day, we got to see a special guy out for a walk. Ranger is a red-tailed hawk that was injured by a car and now serves as bird-in-residence. He can’t be let back into the wild due to his injuries, but they are rehabilitating him. Miss L and I got to pet his very soft feathers. He was quite fond of her hat. I told her he probably thought she was a big rabbit.

The winter light is moody, blue, sad, and beautiful.

Fat Tuesday happened, and genuine Hamtramck paczki. My hipster colleague’s girlfriend stood in line at the best bakery for paczki and he made sure we had a box.

Sarge scared us to death. Being the quasi-billy goat that he is, he ate something that didn’t agree with him (likely a portion of the rubber floor matting in the basement). Seriously did not agree with him – to the point that I thought we were going to have to say goodbye to our big fluffy bae far too soon. However, 36 hours in the Animal Emergency Center, IV fluids, antibiotics, several rounds of x-rays, and $1,400 later, he came home. He was properly aggrieved by his ordeal and spent several days sleeping.

Miss L took tender care of him. $1,400 was well spent to keep these two together.

After this exhausting month, Emmett & I are looking forward to March.

happy places

I’m enjoying my Sunday morning lie-in in my favorite way, propped up in bed with my computer, a cup of coffee, and the windows wide open to sunshine and birdsong. Also the Weather Channel, but that didn’t sound quite so lyrical. I’m sort of addicted to the Weather Channel. For some reason, I find the constant flow of information about weather in other parts of the country very soothing. It seems to remind me that I am not alone in my own little weather bubble. Emmett and Sarge are out playing dress-up with Miss L in her room and eyeballing Gaston – the fish – with evil intent. They are, I think, still recovering from the trauma of July 4. They spent most of the booming fireworks either hanging from the screens or hiding under the bed.

Southeast Michigan has been blessed with an amazing weather weekend, sunny and clear and warm without being uncomfortable. Miss L and I spent the day of the 4th in our happy place with a bag of birdseed and binoculars.

In addition to feeding the birds, we had a little chipmunk following us closely to pick up the dropped birdseed. He even came right up and took seed out of my hand, leaving a generous smear of chipmunk drool. Miss L knows better than to try to feed a rodent with her bare hand so she kept a safe distance and rolled her eyes at me.

We were so busy having fun that I didn’t get out to run until midday yesterday, and pulled out a pretty pathetic 4 miles with a lot of wheezing even though honestly, I had no reason for the hystrionics. There was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too hot. Yet still, I came home a bedraggled red-faced mess wondering why I call myself a runner. I sacked out in the backyard chaise for awhile while I finished ‘Attachments’ by Rainbow Rowell, which was a decent if somewhat fluffy romantic novel. I have little stomach these days for fluffy romantic novels but it was engaging and breezy and the right kind of read for a chaise, although there were constant interruptions by the wildlife in the yard. The hummingbirds are crazy pigfaces this year and can’t stay away from our feeder – their tiny motor noise is constant and they aren’t deterred by Emmett’s wild fishtail jumps at the screen window to get them, or our presence in the yard. And we even have a tiny brave baby bunny who came out from the shrubbery to sit a foot away from my sweat-reeking prone figure and nibble on clover.

The tomato plants that I bought from Michigan Heirlooms are booming and I have many little green tomatoes starting. The horrible Mr Stripeys that I detested last year appear to have reseeded themselves in one of the other beds and I’m waiting to see what they are going to do – if they seem like they are going to develop flowers, I’ll thin them and stake them and see if I can coax something out of them worth eating.

In front yard news, I worried that the pink Annabelle hydrangeas might have been irretrievably damaged by our harsh winter, but they are back and in better shape than ever. The day lilies need to be thinned and the knockout rose bush, which had grown to epic proportions, reminding me of the gnarled thorn hedges around castles in fairy tales, has bounced back as well even after my vicious pruning of it. I am full of plans for the backyard and feel like every plant and every tiny garden space that I invest in weaves a bit more protective magic around the house.

I’m hoping that this week is short and relatively painless, as Miss L and I leave for a nice weeklong northern Michigan vacation on Thursday afternoon, and I think we both really need the downtime. I, for one, am looking forward to long sleeps, no makeup, and some time spent outdoors and with my folks.

spring malaise

“Perhaps what we call depression isn’t really a disorder at all but, like physical pain, an alarm of sorts, alerting us that something is undoubtedly wrong; that perhaps it is time to stop, take a time-out, take as long as it takes, and attend to the unaddressed business of filling our souls.” – Lee Stringer

I have a spring cold, and all of the suddenly nice days have made me perhaps a little depressed too. I know, I’m contrary. Worst winter of the decade, I’m fairly chipper, give me some sunshine and pollen and it brings me to my knees. I think it’s partially the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something that I’m not or enjoying the sunshine or riding a dappled pony through a field of daffodils or doing a triathlon instead of what I’m actually doing, which is usually sitting on the couch.

Some days there’s nothing for it except rest, and fresh food, and maybe flowers. I’ve also spent a fair bit of time on the couch with Season 6 of ‘Mad Men’ (and coincidentally, recently found January Jones has an Instagram feed, and if you can get past the endless parade of absolutely spectacular selfies, her hashtagging and commentary is pretty funny and clever).

I don’t get sick very often but when I do, I am a miserable human being to be around, disheveled and bleary and endlessly contaminating shared surfaces. So it’s nice to have one little soul in the world who can tolerate me at my worst. (As much as I love it, my neti pot does not have a soul, so it doesn’t count.)

It used to be Grey Cat, and I have been blessed by whatever benevolent wind blows around this universe to have found another.

Emmett, of course, in his softer moments when he is not trying to escape from Alcatraz or knock pictures off the walls or swing on my Japanese lantern or tear his litterbox apart or find some birds to chew on.

#thisiswhywecanthavenicethings

(suck it, January).

bucket filling

I really limped into the homestretch of the weekend – it was a long week of hard work. There was a “three states in one day and back” kind of day, and a “going away party for a Japanese friend” kind of day, and a “kindergarten Valentine’s day party” kind of day. And this weekend I find myself alone, which is a bit anxiety-producing but more than likely a much-needed respite and an excuse to be as ridiculously lazy as I can possibly be. In kindergarten they teach the concept of bucket-filling – filling other’s buckets with kindness, and filling your own with things that make you happy. It’s a kind of private magic to have a good stretch of time to just be quiet, to drift around the house cleaning and thinking and not talking, watering plants and doing little projects and refilling birdfeeders and falling asleep whenever I want and trying new recipes. It leaves me feeling a little stronger, my light shining a little more brightly.

I have a stack of new books from the library – I love it and hate it when everything on my reserve list comes in at once, such pressure – and there are some awesomely bad old movies on the movie channel to look forward to, including the piece de resistance, The Gorgon, a masterpiece of schlock. I just read this which I wanted to share. I have a raggedy old chair and some milk paint in case I feel motivated enough for a project, and I have two boyfriends with stripes, whiskers, and paws to keep me company. Posing beautifully with books is just one of the things they’re good at.