feline matters (six)

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At the lowest point, Em and Sarge could not stand being in the same room with one another, and if they were, there was violence. They circled around each other like strangers- Sarge cool and slightly interested, Emmett wild eyed and growling in his throat. If Sarge made a sudden move, Emmett exploded like a spring, his growl turning to a wildcat scream that rose every goosebump on my skin. There was also a lot of urine marking and I have a great tolerance for a lot of things, but not that.

An appointment with a pet behavior specialist helped me get a handle on things. I was clear from the first that rehoming one of them was the absolute last option. I couldn’t bear to let go of Emmett, and Miss L loves Sarge. So for several months, they lived in separate bedrooms that I regularly doused with bleach solution. It was the only thing that kept them from revisiting a spot they marked before. (Flowery smelling or citrus cleaners had the opposite effect, exacerbating the problem.)

The cat lady behavior specialist spent several hours being charmed by Sarge, while Emmett hunched in his carrier looking miserable. We came away with a prescription for cat Prozac and a renewed sense of hope that our family could be put back together. Since then, I’ve been grinding up the pills and sprinkling them in their wet food. I arrived at this method after realizing that they could detect a whole or partial pill in a pill pocket or a treat, or even if left whole in their wet food. Sick of finding that they had delicately eaten around the pill, leaving it soggy and ruined, I now ferociously pulverize it.

Within two weeks, the cats were able to spend ever-longer periods of time together & the marking was confined to the litter box. It’s an inestimable relief to have them together again. I have to completely redecorate the spare bedroom, as Sarge is the Odd Couple Oscar to Emmett’s Felix, but our home life is vastly better and the brothers are brothers once more.

The only sad thing is that it’s had an effect on Emmett’s personality. Before the meds, he was Mr Bright Eyes, Mr Fearless, the intrepid one with the big meow. Now, his pupils dilated, he is somewhat dazed and remote, sleepy. His brash kittenish way is gone and there hasn’t even been much cuddling on his very favorite Sherpa blanket with me. 

So this morning, when I woke up to find him asleep on the foot of the bed, I rested for awhile with him, admiring his soft stripes and needle sharp nail tips, his deep purr. 

And that, boss, is the long explanation of why I was late this morning.

running, dreams, and podcasts (five)

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My workouts are usually done on my lunch hour. If the weather is fine, I can go outside and run on the wide shoulder of the road or into nearby residential neighborhoods; about a mile down the road is a local college with an outdoor track. In the winter, Widget Central has a small but sufficiently equipped workout room and several times a week I pack my gym bag and either spin or run on the treadmill.
Because I hate Apple (and specifically iTunes) so passionately I now listen to books or podcasts while I run, or nothing at all. This has reduced my speed but I think in general it’s good mental discipline. Today while I slogged out my miles on the treadmill, I listened to an old Fresh Air with Neil Gaiman. He wasn’t the primary interview, but as usual he said enough in his 10 minute discussion to keep me intrigued. For example: “The idea that even the most normal people close their eyes for six, seven, eight hours a night and during that time, for several hours, go absolutely and utterly stark-staring mad is beautiful.” I never thought about it this way, but it made me think about the dream I had last night, in which my mother and I browsed through a pottery shop in an English stone cottage in the countryside. I admired the stained glass and the pottery tiles, all of which seemed to be incredibly delicate, wrought lighthouses, including one black and white one that stood in a snowfall. A blind woman had made them all, and she left her post behind the counter to read my fortune. She held my hand in her soft, wrinkled one, and when I asked her what she saw, she said, “Nothing,” and I didn’t know if that was in reference to my future or if she was being terribly literal about my question.
This made the first mile go quickly and most of the second mile was absorbed in pondering Mr Gaiman’s gobsmacking revelation that Adam of biblical fame had three wives. I knew about Eve, of course, and I was aware of Lilith, but I had no idea that in Jewish mysticism, Adam had a second wife. Apparently God built this second wife before Adam’s eyes, from bone to tissue to hair, and Adam was so grossed out by watching this process that he absolutely couldn’t stay married to her. This wasn’t intended to be a funny story, but it made me laugh all the same, because in a way, this is a very instructive parable about human nature and specifically why it doesn’t pay to let the person you are in love with see too much of your insides.

the real world (four)

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Yesterday we pretty much spent the day in pajamas. I made beef stew and we baked Toll House cookies with a bag of M&M’s thrown in for good measure. (I’ve finally perfected the art of the chocolate chip cookie and it relies on under baking and not using butter.) 

We spent most of our time in front of the wood stove, learning the new Ravensburger games that Santa brought. Miss L prefers Enchanted Forest but I am rapidly becoming obsessed with Labyrinth and so proud of the fact that she regularly beats me at it. 

The Prozac that I’ve been surreptitiously slipping the cats (ground up in their wet food) appears to be gaining a foothold and for the first time in months, Emmett and Sarge lounged in the same room with us. The enjoyed the fire, and the periodic roll of dice, and paid no attention at all to the suburbanite deer that wandered up to the birdfeeders in broad daylight. There was no cat-on-cat violence or mayhem or urination. Hurrah for Better Living Through Chemistry!

Family Game Night might just become a thing for us and I’m wondering if she’s old enough for the Junior Settlers of Cataan? And if we still have that old Carcassone game in the basement? That is technically my ex-husband’s, but the directions are in German (indecipherable) and we couldn’t remember how to play. I’m sure they’re now available on YouTube or the general interwebz.

Anyway, I sat at my desk today and clung to the memory of our pleasant and serene pajama day. The first day back at work and school was tough. I had to repeatedly tell L that everyone feels the same way. Everyone would rather be in pajamas with the people they love (and cats) than in the ‘outside world’. (I refuse to call it the ‘real world’ because I don’t want it to be my ‘real world’. I would rather consider it to be the ‘world I am forced by necessity to venture into’ as opposed to the ‘real world’ – which for me is my home, with my little family, doing things we love together. That’s the ‘real world’. Or it should be.)

the challenge.

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One of my favorite blogs (Foxs Lane) has blogged every day for the past two Januaries running. This isn’t uncommon; there is actually some sort of organized blog event that goes by a completely obnoxious acronym (NaBlahBloMeh or some such thing) challenging bloggers to post every day. But Foxs Lane is different. Her reasons for doing so are compelling and her blog is really utterly beautiful and it’s made me think, could I write every day for a month?

The answer is of course I can. My content might be sparse and I might not be full of lush photographs or lyrical philosophical insights, but of course I can commit to set down some words every day for a month. And so I shall. I considered this challenge last night as I was driving home from a lovely dinner party in my old hometown. There was wine and cheesecake and Cards Against Humanity and laughing til our faces hurt and this amazing salad that was so fresh and wonderful that I actually dreamed about it last night. (I dreamed about it in a good wholesome way, not in a Cards Against Humanity way, because damn, that game can make anything feel creepy.)

01.2016_saturday

Whenever I go back to that town, I have an almost visceral, skin-crawling reaction to being in a place where I spent my formative years. Every house is familiar, every street. It’s almost mythic. The atmosphere is charged with memory and importance and I am always conflicted when I cross the boundary and set off home along black highways between desolate cornfields.

Anyway, last night I was driving home, listening to Elizabeth Gilbert on the World Book Club and I looked at the clock on my dashboard and calculated that there was no way I could make it home in time to post yesterday. I guess that’s when I realized that I was committed to this challenge.

I’ll see you all tomorrow and in the meantime, here is a picture of my friend’s ridiculously handsome dog. He helped me eat some of my ham but I did NOT share the salad.

01.2016_Freud

 

commitment day

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I ended 2015 in the best way possible – in front of my own woodstove, with two brother cats doped up on Prozac and finally cautiously co-existing in the same room for the first time in 3 months.

Every year, I wake up on New Year’s Day and notice a little 5k (“Commitment Day 5k”) that runs right past my front door, and every year I think, ‘aww, I ought to sign up for that next year.’ So last night at about 11.30 – hazy and sleepy with woodstove heat and basking cat – I did so.

The morning dawned cold and snowy and Emmett couldn’t believe I was getting out of the fleece sheets and Sherpa blanket. I trekked to the starting line and collected my t-shirt and blew on my hands for awhile, and a man in a Russian fur hat started us off. The first mile was bitterly chilly; little snowdrifts collected in my eyebrows. Then by mile 2 I felt warmer, and looser; no music to listen to except the sound of footfalls in the snow and the rasping breath of runners. I ran past my house along the route with approximately 150 other earlybird souls and every split got a little faster. It was an overall slow run, but I felt as good as it is possible to feel at the finish line when your eyelashes are frozen.

01.2016_5k

Emmett hadn’t budged off the Sherpa blanket when I came back in except to squeak and glare at me.

I don’t make resolutions, but I have some things I’d like to accomplish in 2016. I’d like to spend as much time possible with the best little human on the planet, my redhaired girl. I’d like to read 50 books (since I squeaked in under the line of my 2015 45-book goal at around 9.00 last night, thanks to a late-year decision to include graphic novels). I’d like to run another half marathon and lots of other smaller events. I’d like to run more miles every week and never miss a week. I’d like to blog more and watch birds a lot and go for walks. I’d like to not worry as much if people like me. I’d like to spend lots of time with my family and my friends. I’d like to finish the novel I have in draft form and in scattered handwritten notes on scraps of paper.

And for now, I’d like to wish you all a very blessed 2016, and go join Emmett on the Sherpa blanket, and watch my bae Jim Harbaugh whup some Florida bum in the Citrus Bowl, and maybe get some pizza at Whole Foods later.

In 2016, I want to enjoy the little, simple things as thoroughly as I did in 2015, and that starts now.

xoxo.

merry merry

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12.2015 christmas tree

somewhat blurry pic of the ginormous real tree at cherry republic, glen arbor

Miss L and I spent a few days Up North and are just back downstate for Christmas. In contrast to the last two winters in Michigan, it’s been mild and warm, without snow. This has contributed excessively to allergies, sneezing and sinusitis, and although I wouldn’t wish for another deep freeze winter, I would prefer a hard cold day of snow to a nonstop muddy downpour.

The upside to the lack of snow was that I could trail run a bit. I feel like I’m starting to get my running mojo back, breathing easier, moving more nimbly, letting my mind roam around while my body does what it is trained to do.

When I came downstairs in the morning, ready to go, wearing my white and grey brand name running jacket, though, my parents dug their heels in.

Even in the Sleeping Bear, they said, there are hunters in the woods, and wearing white is the worst thing you can do. You look just like a deer flicking its tail, they said.

Here, they said, and handed me a bright orange cap. I reluctantly donned it.

Not good enough, they said, and my father disappeared to dig around in his closet.

HERE, he said triumphantly, and presented me with a choice of either a hunter’s vest with bright orange accents or a yellow anorak, both of which belonged to him.

YOU ARE KIDDING ME, I said.

No we are not, they said, so I donned the enormous yellow XL anorak that flapped like a sail around me. Miss L thought this was hugely funny yet horrifying, so I had to hide my own horror and reinforce that safety comes first. It’s not a fashion show, I said, it’s about being safe and making good decisions. I donned the orange cap with as much dignity as I could muster and avoided looking in the mirror on my way out the door.

I had an amazing trail run despite the flapping anorak and hit the last mile, feeling relieved that no one had seen me in my strange garb. My muscles were loose, nothing pained me, and my breath came evenly. I watched where I set my feet, leaves and twisted tree roots, wood soil turning to sand and back again, there on the edge of the lake. I’d heard gunshots in the woods, too, so my parents’ admonition seemed less far-fetched. Then, suddenly, I heard a friendly voice behind me calling out that she was passing me on the left, and a woman darted around me. Did you hear those gunshots?… she called as she flew by, up a slight rise littered with dead leaves, her breath showing in billows. She was slim and athletic, wearing running pants and a stylish lavender running jacket. Yes, I called back. That’s why I’m wearing this…I shook my father’s jacket.

I saw you, she called back, and laughed a bit, and took off again , leaving me in her wake.

She was stretching out in the parking lot of the Old Indian trail when I finished, and we chatted companionably for a few minutes. She was an Ironman, which made me feel less bad about being schooled by her on the trail. She was also really friendly and avoided looking at my strange outfit, which made me like her more. We agreed it was a great morning run – mild, clear, and the views of Lake Michigan from the trail end were pretty amazing.

12.2015 old indian trail

12.2015 lake michigan view

Plus, I didn’t get shot by a half-drunk hunter, so that’s a bonus too. Thanks Mom & Dad. It’s nice to see love in action, displayed in small acts of concern and caution, even if the expression of it is in an XL yellow anorak.

 

It’s always tough to leave the place I like the best to come back downstate, but I think it’s important for our family to have Christmas in our house (or at Miss L’s dad’s house) when she’s young, and it’s also important to me that she gets to see both of her parents on Christmas. Maybe that will change as she gets older. In fact, I’m sure it will, as our relationships change, as we all move on and grow, but for now, it works and everyone is happy with the arrangement. Her dad will come over tomorrow morning for breakfast and coffee and to open presents, and the fact that we can do that is a gift in and of itself. I am as always aware of how truly blessed I am on this Christmas Eve, and I hope all of you are as well. Merry merry.

 

there and back again

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10.2015 frankfort beach front

So since I last posted, I’ve been to Japan and back again, my cats have lost their minds and been prescribed Prozac, I’ve narrowly avoided serving on a federal jury in a terrible case involving heinous acts against children, my workplace has lost its collective mind and NOT been prescribed Prozac, I’ve been rear-ended, wrestled with putting up my first live Christmas tree in years with only a cat and a 7-year old to help (“Is it straight now??” “Nope.” “!@#$%!”), ridden the emotional rollercoaster of Jim Harbaugh’s first college coaching season back at Michigan, I’ve cursed Donald Trump to the fiery pits of hell for his hate speech and fear-mongering, I’ve given multiple presentations, and now it’s 60 degrees F. in Michigan in December. I had to buy an actual notebook for my ‘to-do’ list. The doorknob fell off my front door (this is actually an excellent deterrent against thieves and visitors), and between the rear-ending and a missing hubcap, I look like I’m cruising around town in what we used to call a “hoopty”.

11.2015 emmett vet

The worst of it has really been the cats. They have a terrible case of redirected feline aggression and haven’t been able to be in the same room for almost three months because they will actually physically harm each other. I’m hoping the Prozac will help us get back our happy calm home because I can deal with whatever the outside world throws at me as long as I have my little family around me, and two of them have four paws each.

I’m not sure what has tilted the world off its axis but I am hoping in the next couple of weeks, it goes back again. I’m really looking forward to a week off over Christmas to remain in pajamas and finish some knitting and reading. Maybe I’ll fix the doorknob…or maybe not.

 

i know, i know.

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I know, I know. This is why I will never have a famously well-read blog that I can actually make money from and then melodramatically complain about the stress of writing sponsored posts for a living. I am lucky if I post once a quarter and look, not even a big splashy photograph to set the theme.

It’s autumn here in southeastern Michigan but still feels like summer. I am still stubbornly single and it looks like it’s going to stay that way for awhile if not longer, since the only male that I can remotely see myself marrying is Jim Harbaugh and he is taken. And would likely be no better equipped to put up with me than any of the other hapless, deer in headlights men that have blithely attempted to date me and quickly realized that for one reason or another they were utterly and completely in over their heads. (I always thought I was a pretty normal person, but based on the state of my interpersonal relations with the opposite sex, I am now willing to concede MAYBE NO). Mercury Retrograde has once again wreaked havoc personally and professionally with an influx of busyness, tasks, stress, and annoyances but I am largely unconcerned with all of them. Morning meditations and evening tea.

Miss L is joyfully back to school and already has math homework that I can’t figure out. (Common core…!#$%) I haven’t vacuumed in a couple of weeks and there is a spider living in the mailbox that is SO BIG that I can hear its legs tinking against the metal when the lid is closed. I am astonished that the mailman is still brave enough to put his hand in the box to put mail in there since I can barely bring myself to pull the mail OUT and have to shake every piece vigorously to ensure that the goliath isn’t clinging to it.

I haven’t vacuumed in a couple of weeks but am keeping well up with laundry. You’d think that this lack of household cleaning would mean that my attention has been focused on the yard, but no. It is mostly dead or dying. The chipmunks have decimated what’s left of the heirlooms, my house was stalked by a raccoon, and the leaves are starting to fall. This will continue until it snows. The maples lose their leaves first, before anyone is remotely ready to rake. My house looks like a Peanuts cartoon – all green lawns up and down the block and then MINE, hidden under a red and gold mound. I will curse bitterly and get these raked up and then the tulip tree will wait until the very end and drop all of its leaves, so I will be raking in the sun and heat and raking in the cold and sleet. Or not raking at all, which will make the neighbors grit their teeth. I don’t mind so much about Snow Hag on the one side, but I do feel sorry for the dentist on the other. He has a really beautiful lawn and gardens and I am quite sure that when GB moved out, the dentist wept, realizing that a divorcee would never be able to keep pace with yardwork. I try, but have become reduced to just mowing the one strip of grass on his side of my driveway so that in comparison, things don’t look so bad.

Rather than doing chores, I am taking naps and reading ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami. I’ve read some really good books this summer / fall but will save that for another post, as well as my running update. I have a goal of publishing once a week (hahahaha…WHEW) I’ve also been helping Miss L’s Daisy troop – we did a great trip to Gleaner’s in Detroit, and I was a parent helper at their last troop meeting. I thought this would be the equivalent of a child’s birthday party (read: painful) but it was actually pretty fun and I made myself proud by getting all of her badges affixed to her vest (finally). I’m scheduling work trips and getting my passport renewed and watching the Weather Channel and ‘Orphan Black’ and wondering why my DVR won’t record the new ‘Muppets’. (Is that a sign from the universe?)

So, the world proceeds apace. See you next week (hahahaha….WHEW) for my next post.

PS – What does it mean when one has dreams over two nights about someone who they haven’t thought about in years? I haven’t thought about my friend from high school in a long time, but the past two nights I’ve dreamt of her and this concerns me vaguely. I’m also dreaming about packing, which is easier to symbolically deconstruct.

mostly about running.

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08.2015 run for the hills

This morning, I rolled out of bed and donned my new purple running shorts, and rode my bike down to the park. I had my wireless headphones and my Garmin charged, my brand new Amphipod belt to hold my phone and my bike lock key, and I felt that I was pretty adequately hydrated.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a 4-mile “Fun Run” locally and had the life sucked out of me. I was tired, I hadn’t fueled properly, hadn’t hydrated well. I still finished with a 3rd place age group but I was horribly disappointed with my pace and it was actually the first race that I’d ever walked partway. I walked through the drink stations and I couldn’t even hit the finish line strong.

It’s taken me a long time to come back from my stress fracture and in many ways, that injury reset me as a runner. I thought that once it was healed, I would go back to the same level of running as I’d been at before I was injured, but that’s not the case. I am a slower runner now. Maybe the speed will come back, maybe it won’t. Honestly, I don’t care much, because I feel like I am a smarter, happier runner.

I plan my miles now on a spreadsheet, and I cross-train with spinning and light weight work. I am trying tempo and interval training runs, and I’m not using running as a weight management technique, the way I did a couple of years ago. In fact, I’m the heaviest I’ve been since Miss L was born, but I’m also probably the healthiest, too, and definitely the happiest. I used to flog myself during my runs, constantly looking at my Garmin and pushing for pace, to the point that I’d feel angry at myself if I couldn’t hit the arbitrary goals I set for myself. If I walked during a training run, it ruined the run for me, and I never would have considered walking during a race. All of my PR’s in 5k, 10k, and half were set in 2013. But at the end of that year, I was injured, and 2014 was a write-off because of that.

This morning’s 10k was the Farmington Run for the Hills, a local event benefitting Special Olympics, and the first stop on my half-marathon training. It is a hilly, hot course through the neighborhoods and when I say hilly, I mean hilly. Every time you think you’ve seen the last hill, there is another one, with the last one about a mile from the finish line. It was a slow, hot slog. I had technical difficulties with my running playlist, which shut itself off after a U2 song that I had no recollection of putting on there to begin with (thanks Apple). I remembered various aspects of it from when I ran it two years ago – the dirt hill, the killer hill, the long slow incline, turning off onto the grass before the homestretch, the sun in my eyes. Two years ago, I PR’d the course. Today, I ran it five minutes slower than that PR.

But I learned the lessons from the Bataan Death March Fun Run.

Yes, I walked. I walked several times through the drink stations and made sure I was hydrating. I haven’t run 6 miles since my injury – the longest up til this morning was 5. So I made sure that I wasn’t pushing myself so hard that I felt sick, the way I did two years ago. I could have pushed myself more – I knew that when I was able to ride my bike home and didn’t feel sore or weak or whipped. I could conversationally thank all the volunteers I ran past, and if I’d been pushing myself, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed them. But I remember volunteering at a race last year and feeling so pleased when a runner thanked me, I think I will always try to do that from now on.

I could be disappointed that I didn’t PR or break that magical pace mark per mile that makes me feel great about myself. In a couple of weeks I’ll do the Kensington Challenge 9-mile, which is the second stop on half-marathon training. A lot of my training this late summer / early fall will have to be done on the treadmill, and I have no plans to PR in October when I head up to Empire. But I’m okay now being a pretty average runner and feeling cheerful about that because for me, being an average runner means being a happy and healthy and uninjured runner (hopefully).

blunt force treatments and glass boxes.

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magic in the city.

magic in the city.

It started out as a small patch that itched and felt like a heat rash. By yesterday midday, it had grown to a fist-sized area of maddening vesicles surrounded by a bruise. I walked into the Assistant General Counsel’s office to ask her about something and before I could finish my sentence, she was eyeing me.

“What the fuck are you digging at on your back?” she demanded.

I hadn’t noticed I was absently scratching while I talked to her.

“Lemme see,” she said, and I shut the door so I could lift up my shirt and show her the patch.

“Yeah, that’s shingles,” she said. “Call your fucking doctor and get in right away, cuz if you’re not already in terrible pain, you will be soon.”

And lo, I found myself at my old familiar Urgent Care. It seems to be exclusively staffed with eastern European doctors who are prone to viewing my ailments as invading armies that must be stamped out and annihilated with blunt force. No delicate sophisticated treatments for them; they prescribe me antibiotics the size of horse pills, a scorched earth strategy of leaving no small writhing germ behind. I like that.

In retrospect, it has been a pretty stressful summer, both at work and on the romantic front, so it’s not surprising that I find myself in bed dizzy and drowsy with antivirals, slathered in lidocaine cream. There have been scandals and sackings at work, investigations and interviews with stone-faced executives who tell you later behind closed doors that they just wish someone would take this cup from them. And on the romantic front, a meeting and a break up and a make up with someone that I am frighteningly fond of, and all the complications that arise from that.

Dating at my age and as a divorced working mom is an adventure and not for the thin-skinned. The men I’ve met have also been divorced and with children, only they’ve been divorced for much longer than I have. They seem open to having a relationship, to letting someone in, but being on their own has hardened them somehow. They say the right things, they do the right things, their hearts are right there, but closed off somehow, in a glass box. I can see it, but I can’t touch it. They know they can do it on their own, they have made homes and a family for their children, they are wary and protective of having that disturbed, even positively, by another factor to balance.

And I completely understand it because I feel the same way. I know I can survive. I love my home, I know I can make it on my own and be happy with Miss L and my job and the blessings that I have; I want more, but that ‘more’ will have to be pretty incredible, and it won’t come at the expense of what I’ve already earned through blood, sweat, and tears. However, I’m still flexible, and open, and the men I date, their glass boxes have grown heavier, shatterproof. I see that and I don’t want to become that. I don’t know how you date and not grow increasingly protective and closed off, but it seems that at some point, you have to be able to let things penetrate, even if it’s scary and hard.

So I have been spending time with a man that I really like. It’s a challenge, there have been stops and starts and many feelings of ‘this is too hard’ for both of us. But so far, we have struggled through it, and I am hopeful that our friendship will last. I’ve let him into my house, which is a huge step for me, to let someone see the flaws and beauty and small chaos where my private heart lives. A couple of times, I’ve had to tell myself, ‘I’m really proud of you, this is a big step, I know that everything isn’t perfect but it’s okay to let someone see that’. Deep breath, open the door, let someone in.

It’s nice to have someone to go for walks with and sit on the porch with, and see movies with. I don’t know if it will be more than that, but time will tell if we’re able to continue the process of letting each other in. I feel good about going slow with that. It’s hard enough to trust a single person, and incorporate them into your life; we have to know we can do that before we start with other aspects. I hope our glass boxes slowly dissipate, but for right now, it’s enough that we can meet in the middle and know we can survive.