Introductions 2: The Rug

This is the Rug, aka, Will.

I got this cuddly kitten the summer of 2009 from Vernal, along with his white sister, for my grandparents to have. After months of different names my Grandpa decided on dead ancestral names. The girl is Nezzy (after whom?) and Will is either from Willard or Wilford, not sure which, but I'm pretty sure he's a dead great, great, great uncle or something. Will can be a bit of a trying cat. He loves to lick which may not be so bad except he has a much rougher tongue than any other house cat I know. He loves to cuddle and purr and rub faces which would also be cute except when it's between 4 and 6 in the morning. He also has an obsession with lying on things. Any thing that is on the floor-like my books, or newspapers, or boxes, or laundry baskets. Mr. Will is still under two years old, so he has a bit of the pesty kitten still in him. For instance, he chews (doesn't eat) on my Majesty Palm. He also likes to sleep in roads, which leads me to how I got him (or he got me).

One morning Grandma came out to find Will sitting pitifully on the driveway unable to move meowing his most verbose meow. After taking him to the vet he was discovered to have a broken pelvis and would require 6 weeks of attentive care. Grandma didn't think she was up to that so I took him, put him in a crate in our spare bedroom, and began to wonder if he'd live. Casey, my husband, was gone for the summer when I received him so it was up to me (and a ton of help from Emilie, my sister) to rehabilitate him. This included holding him over the litter box when he couldn't support himself, shoving fluids down him, and holding handfuls of food in front of his mouth. We also discovered he had severely damaged his scapula resulting in a chunk of bone missing (we assume some of it might be floating around). For days he didn't go #2 and we though it might have damaged his intestines. I have a distant cousin up here who is a vet, and I pestered him for advice. He told us to give him time (that worked) and prescribed better medicines. Will was starting to show interest in moving around (Monster did not like this) when one night I was brushing him and chunks of hair started to fall out of just one place. He got this bald patch the size of my hand on his back/side. The skin peeled off and after discussing it I realized he had been hard enough the blood vessels that supplied the skin had been damaged. This lead to tissue death and an even goofier looking cat.

While this is a horrible picture you can get an idea of his baldness. However, it's growing back. He's jumping again, and while has a slight limp, is back to his normal needy self. After a while of running around chasing and jumping on Monster he'll limp a little more, lay down, and pant. I love the panting.

 And while I know this to be way too long of a post about a cat, you need to know that my kitties are my children (for now). They constantly entertain and comfort me in their funny little ways.

Introductions 1

I haven't really introduced much about me or my family in this blog. In my opinion I'm rather boring. However, I have two... adoptees.... who are very entertaining (at least my husband and I think so). So without further ado, and a possible disclaimer, here are Monster and Will.


Monster is on the left and Will on the right.

It's almost impossible to get a good picture of them together so the rest will be their personal portraits. I'll start with Monster. She came into our lives this past winter. We saw her on the street in the middle of the night and as we ran during the day.


One day as we ran past her I stopped to pet her (I do this with EVERY cat). She rubbed and purred and followed us the few houses down to our apartment. I carried her the rest of the way inside where she ate some reserve cat food I have (for my landlords cat). After investigating the place she curled up on a rocking chair cushion and has pretty much stayed there since.

I know she looks all cute and cuddly. Yeah, right. She'd let us scratch and rub and then WHAM! out of nowhere she'd rip our head, finger, hand-whatever she could get-right off. We thought we would have to kick her out with how violent she could be.

But then one day I was rubbing her belly (this was a very rare occurrence) and felt two small, hard knobs. After investigating more we discovered she had BBs in her abdomen and legs. I still feel a new one occasionally. It opened up our minds to the fact that our kitty (yeah, she was now mine) had been awfully abused and didn't trust, well, anyone.

Now that we've had her for about 8 months she's practically a different cat. She loves attention and her belly scratched. We'll call and she comes trotting over. While she's gained significant weight, she's not overweight (she was a skinny little thing) and loves treats and take-out food. The other day she had some shrimp and about took my finger off getting to it.

She's extremely trusting now. With her shiny coat and hooded eyes she usually resembles an angry snob, but that's only true about a 1/5 of the time now. She has a canny habit of jumping up on my dresser each night RIGHT as I'm about to fall asleep and demanding scratching while purring and kneading the mattress. She then curls up on the corner by my feet and wakes me up in the morning with the same purring.

I could probably go on forever talking about her (I could about all the animals in my life) but this is getting pathetic. I'll save the next post for Willard/Wilford the Survivor.

Avoidance Behavior

Sometimes I think there should be a disorder for avoidance and procrastination. There are plenty of other disorders and science allows for behaviors to be classified. Why not avoidance?

I'm getting to something eventually. Just let me ramble for a while.

My husband gets frustrated when people use disorders to condone their actions or give excuses. He recognizes that something, such as OCD, may cause a person to be more predisposed towards a certain conduct. However, when the behavior seems to let people off the hook it drives him nuts. He believes people still need to be held responsible, unless they are clinically insane (then just lock them up...). Sometimes I find myself agreeing with him, but other times, I wish for a little more mercy in the world because I've needed that mercy myself.

What I was getting to... I'm taking summer classes at the University since my husband is working so much these few months. I'm also taking a CNA class at our local technology college. I find it's very hard to motivate myself to study, to review my notes and read the assigned text. Not only that, but I want to sleep in and take naps and be lazy like any summer should be.

So what I want to know is if procrastination is laziness or something more? Is that all I really am? Lazy? Because that sucks. Or is there some physiological explanation for people who are lacking motivation. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe it's better to be lazy and chew myself out for that while trying to make some effort instead of saying "I have THIS", so it makes sense that I can't wake myself up.

Now for ways to make my professor more merciful... I wish.

I'm Getting Lucky

I'm not sure how I got so lucky this week. Ever since spring break in the middle of March I've been lacking motivation to apply myself to school. This is my third year, 6th semester, 24th month of college. I'll be taking classes this summer. And it's not over soon. I'm trying to get into a nursing program which will add a few more years. School is all I've ever known. There are memories before kindergarten, of course, but it seems like school involves the majority of my life. For the next few years it will continue to rule my life.

However, without getting mushy expressing my feelings of gratitude about the education I have had and the chance I have to expand it, I do not take it for granted. It's very important to my life; learning is probably one of the most important things in my life. I'd find my existence much more dull without learning. In fact, I'm more likely to watch the History channel and Animal Planet than a popular sitcom.

I have no idea where I'm getting with this, but I don't really care. I do know I've gotten some really lucky breaks lately. I can only think of it as divine fortune because I don't think I deserve it. On Thursday I got to my Stats 2000 class for a test and could barely answer half of the questions. I had worked through similar questions before; I guess I hadn't cemented the process in my mind well enough because I turned the test in at the last minute of class without all of the pages filled out. I was discouraged, but figured I'd do really well on the next few tests and be fine. Last night I got an email from our professor that almost made me cry. He said a lot of people hadn't finished the test so he was allowing us to finish it at home and redo anything we liked. I was flying high the rest of the night.

Today I had a chemistry class where I was supposed to know all of the amino acids and the corresponding abbreviations plus more. I guessed on more than half of the questions! I promise. Later this afternoon we got the multiple choice exam score back in our email. I missed 4 out of 33. My jaw literally dropped.

Writing this, I realized the moral of this lesson. I have three tests next week and one the week after that. I can't let this go to luck again; I'd better prepare a little better this time.

Sovereign Thoughts

The idea of creating a blog has been in my mind for a while, ever since my sister Emilie introduced me to the then foreign world. Every once in a while, before I fall asleep or as I listen to a great song, monologues drift through my head and I can't help but think they may be brilliant (to me). Of course, the next day having woken up I can barely remember what I thought. I would like this blog to help me express myself more often without fear of what surrounds me interfering.

That brings me to my next hope for this blog. When I was in my mid-teens I liked to think I could do whatever I wanted without care of what others thought. Now I realize it's much the opposite. The majority of my life is spent withholding my true thoughts, feelings, and opinions in fear of disrespecting or offending another. At this point please don't get any ideas that my blog will be full of solioquized rampages. I do respect others and what people think of me is important. I would like to think that is a sign of maturity, but others may disagree. However, I worry that I may live more of my life in the shadows that what I dream of. So this blog will hopefully express more of my daydreams; what I yearn to depict but am afraid of rejection.

For instance, I often let those I respect put a label on me. It's not their faults, it's obviously mine. When I originally picked this template it had a very pink theme. My initial thought was originally of someone I admire who doesn't like pink. But I like it! I don't want this blog to be in defiance of what everyone else dislikes, but I do want it to be what I like. With this first post I've finally written what I want to say. And that makes me ridiculously happy.