Things I Learned from My Cats :)

1) Love carefully, but love fully.

2) No matter what the question is, sleep is the answer.

3) Don't forget to sleep in the sun whenever possible.

4) Stop and listen to the birds.

5) Never underestimate the ability of small silly things to make you happy (anyone seen a cat with a shoestring lately, or a piece of foil? 'Nuff said.)

6) Stretching feels gooood.

7) There's nothing wrong with being independent.

8) Don't be afraid to take a risk for fear of looking silly. If you fail, you can always claim you meant to do that in the first place. (This isn't completely original. George Carlin had a skit years ago in which he talked about how cats would fall and yet make it look like they meant to do that. But I think the principle holds true.)

9) Getting through life is at least 90% a matter of attitude.

10) And finally, there isn't anything wrong with the world that a warm cat, a soft blanket, and a cup of hot chocolate can't cure.

My thanks to Tess, Tasha, Shadow, Cilla, Earl, Elvis, Griffin and Sochi who taught me these lessons. May Bastet watch over you all.

RIP, Soichiro-chan 1994 (???) - 2009

I had to say goodbye to a good friend today. I had to put my cat down today.

Sochi found me in 1997. Those of you who are cat people know that you don't find them---they find you. Sochi found me in a muddy, oily hole-in-the-wall segment of a parking lot (literally; he'd crawled into a loosened area of brick to hide.) He'd been dumped---to this day, I can't imagine that. For the 12 years I was privileged to know him, Sochi was the best example of a cat. He was faithful and fearless and a good friend and companion (and, until I met my husband, he was my most stable male relationship.)

He had such personality, I can't begin to describe it. He might have had some Siamese in him (I certainly couldn't tell it from looking; he was a tuxedo cat through and through) but he sure was vocal enough to make me wonder. There was one meow for "it's time to get up and feed me" and another for "it's time to go to bed" and several thousand others for all the conversations he had in the course of a day. For the longest time, it was just he and I and his talking made me feel much less alone.

I let him go today because he was old and sick and his kidneys had finally, finally shut down. He was a good friend and among the best of cats, and I owed him a graceful exit (and so much more.)

Sochi, my friend, rest in peace. Go play with Tasha and Tess and Shadow and Ginger and Gypsy and Schatze and Klein and all the other animals we've loved and lost. They've been waiting for you. I'll miss you.

It's Me. Posting Again :)

Hi everyone,

Sorry, I fell off the earth there for a bit (well, not really---I was active on my fanfic blog, just not here.;) I've spent the last month or so trying to stay off the radar at work (and mostly succeeding) and trying to keep track of an active, growing toddler (and definitely succeeding there. :-))

We're looking at moving to a larger place after the holidays. No, not to a house---we don't have near the money we'd need to pull that off, and in this economy, I'm not sure we want to take on a California-sized mortgage just now. We're looking at moving to a larger apartment so that the wee one can finally have a room of her own (yes!) and my hubby can have some place for his book business that doesn't involve, oh, every other room in our house. :)

Which brings me to the one change that I fear will be coming sooner rather than later. Sochi, the cat whom I almost had put to sleep in July, is ailing once again. Nothing wrong with him besides being older than Noah, but it's obvious he's coming to the end of the road. I just hate the idea of having to be the one to make a choice to end his life---but after all the years we've had together, I think I owe him more than keeping him alive and in failing health just so I don't have to make the decision. It's a tough call, again, but one I think we'll be making pretty soon.

Tomorrow is Veterans' Day here in the US. If you are veteran, or are serving now, thank you.

Please Don't Feed the Drama Llama :-)

I know it's been a long time (well, a couple of weeks) since I've posted--sorry about that :) I've been busy writing, but the bulk of my time lately has been spent keeping up with (and staying calm around) our resident drama llama.

Yup. NA strikes again.

In brief, she went to my supervisors to blather about how I wasn't doing my job properly. [insert eyeroll here] Without being too specific, the mistakes I made were a direct result of her piss poor communication skills, incomplete directions, as well as some things I should have been made aware of, but wasn't. (I'm not sure who dropped the ball there...but it's annoying, no matter what the ultimate cause was.)

And while I will apologize for mistakes I legitimately made--because, hey, we all make them---I'm not about to fall on my sword just because some attorney with an over-developed sense of drama decided to (metaphorically) stomp her feet and throw a fit.

Other than that...life is going pretty well right now. Hubby is healthy. The wee one (who is not so wee---but growing like the proverbial weed) is happy andalso healthy and (blessedly) normal (or at least as normal as she was going to be coming out of our gene pools. :-P) And I've been writing a lot on my fanfiction blog...it's nice to have the muse back. :-)

I could do without the drama, though. Le sigh. :)

What Was Good About Today

Okay, it's early yet, so I'll write about what was good about yesterday because what's good about right now is that I have my coffee :)

1) One of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon, released a new book in her long (and wonderful) Outlander series. I got a copy of the new book, An Echo in the Bone, the day before yesterday and I've started reading it during lunch. Wow. The only downside is that I hate putting the book down...but you take what you can get.

2) One of my longer fanfiction stories was posted, with its endnotes intact, on one of the main "Beauty and the Beast" fanfiction sites. The endnotes had disappeared when it was first posted and the site owner and I were trying to figure out how to get them back in. I checked this morning, and voila, endnotes. It sounds like a small thing, but there were translations in those endnotes so they were necessary. I'm just glad I won't have any confused readers now. :) (The story, if you're interested, is on my other blog.)

3) I got the project off to NA, after crossing my t's and dotting my i's a number of times. I'm crossing fingers that this particular storm has blown over (for now.)

4) Roisin is going to get her bangs trimmed today; her dad is going to take her while I'm at work. So she'll be happier not having everything in her face. :)

5) And finally...tomorrow is Friday. Whew.

Happy Friday eve, everyone :)

I'll Give That All the Consideration It's Due. Really.

This has not been one of my better days at work, though I suppose I should have seen it coming. About six weeks ago, we had a major shakeup, in which we were assigned new attorneys. No big deal, it happens periodically and while it's an adjustment, it rarely causes problems beyond the first couple of weeks.

Except I didn't get off on the right foot, somehow, with one of my new attorneys--from the start, things have been awkward and uncomfortable between us. And today, that particular chicken came home to roost. She's going into trial next week--and for those of you who don't work with attorneys, the general rule when they're in trial is to throw your work under the door, never turn your back on them, and don't feed them after midnight. (Wait, that last one is for gremlins :) At any rate, even the most even-tempered of them get touchy.

So I offered to help NA (New Attorney) with the section of her trial prep that secretaries traditionally do. She said, no, she'd handle it. Fine. It's her choice to accept the help or not. Before I left today, though, she called me into her office and basically gave me a lecture about all of the things I'd done wrong on her cases. Firstly, she is particular about how she wants things done---and when she's told me about it, I've done it. No arguments, no questions. And yes, I've made minor mistakes, but I've owned up to them and done my best not to repeat them (and at any rate, these were not earth-shaking, verdict-reversing errors.)

My main problem is that the entire speech boiled down to her talking to me like I was an incompetent four year old who'd have to "earn" the right to be given more challenging work from her. Riiigggght. I've been doing my job since she was probably in high school and I have worked for some very, very tough attorneys with extremely demanding caseloads. Not a one of them has ever complained. (Well, one maybe has, but that's Idiot Attorney, and no one takes him seriously anyway.)

So anyway, I've been given the "chance" to redeem myself by helping her with that trial prep that she originally didn't want my help on in the first place (because I was so untrustworthy, don't ya know.) And I'll do it tomorrow, because that's my job and this is one of the things I do well. But if this keeps up---I'm going to have to go to my supervisor. It's been a long time since I've dealt with an attorney that I've had this much of a conflict with (aside from IA, and everyone has a problem with IA) and I don't really want to involve my supervisor unless I have to, because the risk then is ending up on the radar. And who wants that?

Le sigh. I need a vacation.

Drama, Facebook Style, Parte the Second

Well, it finally happened. I got defriended on Facebook, by the same aunt of this post. And to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think. It's not like we were close or anything, but it seems so immature somehow. "I don't agree with you, so I'm not going to talk to you," that sort of thing. I don't know what the final nail in the coffin was for her, but maybe we were just too different.

On my profile page, my religion is listed as Wiccan and my political leanings as "moderate liberal," neither of which is a lie, but I'm wondering if she found my liberal leanings more disturbing than my religious beliefs. ;) She and I weren't ever going to agree, and maybe that was too much.

And I guess that's my real problem with being defriended. I didn't know when she did it, so I never got a chance to have any context or explanation for why it happened. (And yes, I know why Facebook does it this way; I blocked an asshat from my past who tried to contact me, and I was relieved that Facebook would never tell him I'd done it, that I'd just disappear off his radar screen.)

So I'm perplexed and a little saddened. I would have liked to think that someone who sought me out, as my aunt did, would have been more tolerant of what she found. I would have liked to have discovered that her definition of being tolerant didn't mean agreeing with her all the time. But that isn't the reality, apparently.

So, dear aunt, I hope you stay healthy and happy on the path you've chosen. Goodbye and farewell.