When Bad Habits Attack!

So after all the craziness of last week, I took a trip over to the doctor to see why I haven't been feeling any better despite the antibiotics I was prescribed earlier.

Well, turns out I have asthma. Heh. Looks like all that bodily abuse of the last twenty or so years is finally catching up with me. While smoking hasn't been an issue for a while (but was for more than half my life), and my drinking was brought way under control once school started (I have a tendency to drink a lot in the summer and hardly drink at all during the fall and winter months) it's mainly my weight that's plaguing me now. Looks like that's the source of all my troubles. First the bad back (which wasn't caused by the weight but is certainly exacerbated by it), then the migraines, now asthma...what's next, diabetes and a handicapped parking permit? Well, sure. Why not? Throw me a cane while you're at it.

*sigh*

I guess I'm going back to Weight Watchers. Happy Holidays, indeed.

Being fat sucks. Being fat with asthma sucks even worse. Hindsight sucks the most balls ever. Take better care of yourselves, gentle readers. I wish I had.

More on this later. My steroids are calling me.

Another semester under my belt!

As of 7:30 this evening, my semester officially came to an end. Looks like it was another relatively good one grade-wise, though I won't know for sure until grades are posted next week. I hate that they make you wait so long to find out! Talk about nerve-wracking!

I was going to post this morning, after an extended cram session that involved a shit-ton of work, reading, and stressing out and not so much sleep, showers, or nutritious food. Alas, as I sat down to write it all out, my body decided to scream a hearty "fuck you!" at me, and I crashed. Hard.

See, I was working on this project for my Visual Communications (or VisCom as it is more commonly known by those of us who just can't bear to expend the energy for eight whole syllables on a class name), and it hadn't been going very well. It was a 4-paneled advertising kiosk for a travel agency, with graphics on all eight surfaces. For the last couple weeks I struggled with design and construction problems, mostly born of motivation issues stemming from a raging case of Decemberitis and exacerbated by an otherwise hectic schedule. Then two days ago I discovered that my flash drive was missing. It must have fallen off somewhere, and though I spent the entire evening retracing my steps, I turned up nothing.

So yesterday morning I found myself no closer to being done with the thing than I was two weeks ago, and so I took a deep breath, thanked God that I'd had the wherewithal to back up all my files on disc last week (how's that for irony?), and got to work. The timeline went something like this:

6:30 - I drag myself out of bed for my second final of the semester, my Color Theory critique, which goes from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m.

Between 10 a.m. and noon, I run around gathering supplies I was going to need for the project. Then I run a few necessary errands, and by noon I'm on my way back to campus.

Noonish - 1:00 p.m. Fart around, check email, talk to some people, extract the files and organize my thoughts. Freak out a little but remind myself that I've got all the rest of the day to finish this thing.

1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. one panel has the graphics and text finished and laid out, three of the four inside panels are printed.

3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. I take a break to run a few more errands, come home to walk the dog, make a phone call, and stop and get some dinner.

5:30 p.m. I realize I've got exactly 24 hours and 10 minutes to get this thing finished.

4:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Graphics for second panel (a photoshop collage extravaganza) are done and laid out. Still needs text, though.

7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. I screw around a little, get up and stretch and walk around for a minute, then one of my classmates comes in and I end up chatting with her for a while before deciding to take another break. I go and get some coffee, stop home to check on the pets and change my shirt (I'd been wearing this huge sweater and that studio gets hot).

9:00 p.m. - 4:30 a.m. Finally finished with the layouts and printing of all eight sides, the piece is ready to for the construction phase. I decide to do this part at home, because at this point I'm really sick of the inside of Upton Hall room 203. I've had enough. I have bags under my eyes, my vision is blurring, my left eyelid is twitching, my back is stiff, and my right hand is permanently formed into the shape of a mouse.

4:45 a.m. Stop at Tim Horton's for coffee, and for the second time in two weeks, I pull up to the drive-thru only to be shot down. Who knew they closed every night from 4:30 to 5:00? Damn it!

5:00 a.m. - 6:30 a.m. Prints are mounted onto board. Boards are cut and slotted and fit together. Turkey the cat keeps jumping on me, the piece keeps falling apart, and I'm getting increasingly agitated. Finally, at 6:30 a.m. - 17 hours after I started, and 24 hours since I'd last slept - the thing is finished. I'm so damn proud of it, I take it to Starbucks with me when I go to get coffee. My coworkers are slightly baffled as to why I do this, but I wanted someone - anyone - to see the fruit of my labor. Unshowered since Tuesday, skin a sallow shade of gray mixed with the flush of sleep deprivation, looking like I'd been socked in the eyes, rocking indigestion from gallons of coffee and some horrid fried chicken strips, and on my 25th hour with no sleep, I am a picture of creative psychosis.

6:30 a.m. - 7:30 a.m. I still have two books to finish reading for my Anthro exam, which is happening in six hours. I'm confident I can do it, since they're short books with interesting subject matter. Plus I'd been to all the lectures and figure I can just skim over the contents and pick out the stuff I think he's going to test us on. At 7:30, however, my body just gives out, and I literally drop the book I'm reading onto the floor and walk, zombie-like, into my bedroom where I curl up on the bed, clothes and all.

11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. I wake up in a panic, thinking I'd overslept. I look at the clock and realize I still have two whole hours before exam time, so I read for another half hour and then go back to sleep for another 45 minutes. Then I get up and - for the first time in two days - take a shower. Not since the shower I took after hitchhiking for 12 hours in 90-degree weather from Mansfield, MA to Rindge, NH in 1989 has a shower felt so good.

A short time later, I sit down to my Anthro test, and I know all but a few answers. I hope I am right and not just delusional as a result of the previous day's activities. But I'm done in 15 minutes, and walk out feeling pretty confident that I'd done okay. Shortly thereafter I meet with a professor who has agreed to look over my portfolio and advise on some things I can do with it over break in preparation for my review in February. He has lots of advice. I'm going to be busy. Anyone got a copy of Illustrator for PC they can give me?

And then...the answer to the burning question that has you all on the edge of your seats right now: How did I do on the kiosk project? Well...my classmates seemed to like it, but the prof panned it. Not totally, I mean, he didn't tell me it was the biggest hunk of crap he'd ever seen or anything like that, but he had lots of "suggestions for improvement." Basically I'm going to have to do it over again before my review.

But for now, I'm just going to get some sleep. I deserve it.

I'm not in love, so don't forget it...

Don't read too much of anything into this, dear faithful blogwatchers, it's just some weird philosophical musings while I procrastinate working on my final projects for school.

I was given the advice on one of my previous entries to "stop looking for love." And then I started thinking...Maybe I don't want love. Or maybe I do. And then I starting thinking that it would depend on one's definition of love.

Why does "love" have to be such a black-and-white thing? Why can't you love someone even if you don't want to run off and marry them or have their babies? Why does saying "I love you" strike so much fear in the hearts of so many? It's like saying it automatically evokes a sense of entitlement and attachment and commitment and forever-ness. But it shouldn't.

While some of us use the word with reckless abandon, and throw it prematurely, apathetically, or even with some twisted cruelty at people we don't really mean it for, some of us are so afraid of it that we doubt we could feel it at all. Or we start to feel it and we run away and shove it deep down inside because "oh my god, it's scary!" It's not supposed to be scary, though, it's supposed to be wonderful! Fluttering hearts and bluebirds and sunshine and rainbows and all that puke-inducing stuff. Right?

Right?

So why, when we feel so strongly about someone, when our hearts race and the bluebirds orbit our heads, are we not supposed to say we feel this way unless we are fully prepared to commit to this person? What IS it about those "three little words" that holds SO much power and control over us?

Three (and a half!) decades on this planet have shown me that "love" does not always equal happily ever after. It does not always equal a serious or lifetime commitment. If it did, I'd have been married a long time ago. So those I have loved in the past (and to this day still believe truly did love) are to be discounted because I didn't end up with them for the rest of my life? And am I to believe that they did not also love me, because our futures didn't align? And what about those who don't want to be married? Ever? Are they not allowed to love or be loved?

I love lots of people. I'm not just talking about my family (because let's face it, if you know me you know there are more people in that group who are not loved than who are). I have great friends whom I love most dearly. I love my pets to death. I love peppermint gum and little greasy pepperoni. And it's okay for me to say "I love you" to my sister, my best friend, or the slice of pizza I'm about to shove down my throat.

But if you're dating someone and those three words slip from either of your mouths at the inappropriate time or place, it's like the god damned world screeches to a halt and all hell breaks loose.

I guess we'll never know. Because I don't think anyone really knows what love is - or at least there aren't that many people willing to look at it a little more objectively, anyway.

Okay, back to my schoolwork. I love you all. :-)

It's a breakthrough! The DVD is hooked up! And this post is REALLY long!

Long overdue post, I know. I've been busy, plus I guess I just haven't been feeling very inspired. However, today is a joyous day for me, and I must rave...I finally hooked up my god damned DVD player. And I feel like a total idiot because it has taken me nearly TWO YEARS to get around to it.

Yes, two years. Now, you all know my penchant for making a short story very long, so settle in - here's the whole sordid story of my DVD player's journey from twinkle in Deedee's eye to actual, functioning member of Deedee's Audio-Visual setup:

*cues cheesy background music*

Back in September of 2004, I had just started working for a company in an area where the most convenient place to get lunch, unfortunately, was McDonald's. McD's had just come out with the Chicken Selects, you know those really outrageously delicious and overpriced "real" chicken strips, and at the very same time had just fired up the year's "Monopoly" game. So I became hooked on the Chicken Selects (and the occasional Quarter Pounder) and started collecting the Monopoly stamps. The promo that year was a tie-in with Best Buy, wherein no matter what, you earned at least one "Best Buy Buck" or something (I can't remember what they were really called, I think because all that processed food has shorted out parts of my brain). I never won anything on the other stamps, of course, because that's how they rope you in. Everyone gets all nuts because everyone - everyone is just "one stamp away" from a million dollars. But I digress.

I continued to collect the Best Buy stamps and filled up a whole card with them, totalling 20-some-odd dollars. I think I also racked up about 20 pounds during my little stamp-and-chicken frenzy, but that's a separate story altogether. I kept the card in my car with the intention of using it the next time I had occasion to be in Best Buy, which I figured would be soon, since Christmas was right around the corner. My boyfriend at the time had asked for CD-R's for his recording projects and I had my eye on a couple of CD's to which I thought I might like to treat myself, and so I figured I would just hang on to the thing until I got a chance to get over there - or was forced to redeem it before it expired.

I did redeem it on the expiration date - December 11, 2004. It's pretty sad why I actually remember that date, but I had found out the day before that the above-mentioned boyfriend had another girlfriend and had pretty much broken up with me - he just hadn't gotten around to telling me yet - so it was a pretty memorable date. Anyway, after a night of tossing and turning and being really upset, I woke up the next day and said, "Fuck him. I'm buying a DVD player!" and off I trotted to Best Buy to redeem my little stamp booklet, a small paper testament to 6 weeks of eating pounds and pounds of deep-fried, breaded chicken strips and french fries, drinking buckets of Hi-C orange drink, and soothing my new-job stress with M&M McFlurries (God, Judith Moore and Wendy McClure would be so proud of me right now, I think).

So with my red eyes, sore nose, and pounding head (I cried a fair bit over this asshole), I walked in and began to wander around, looking for a good deal on a DVD player. I found one, too - it was on sale AND came with a rebate, and so I bought it. Now, if you know me, you know how proud I get when I score a great deal. So when all was said and done, I think I ended up paying twelve dollars for the thing. Serious bargain. My elation, however, would be short-lived.

Shortly after the killer aqcuisition, I plunged into a pretty deep depression. First the DVD player sat in the back seat of my car for a good couple of weeks. I only took it out when I did because I had to clean out my car for the trip to my sister's house for Christmas. After Christmas, I got worse. The DVD player sat, unopened, on the floor of my living room for quite some time after that. My mood darkened, and I got increasingly sadder and sadder until my house grew an incredible mess around me, and I just didn't care. The poor DVD player was buried under newspapers, junk mail, clothes, and whatever else I'd thrown on it, until only a tiny corner of the box could be seen through the mess. I finally, sometime that spring (we're into 2005 now, dear readers), picked the box up off the floor and set it on a shelf, where it stayed for about a year.

In April of this year (yeah, that's right, I'm talking about 2006), I finally got the house cleaned up and took the DVD player out of the box and put it in the entertainment center. But it wasn't until today, October 8, that I would actually hook the fucking thing up and use it. What was holding me back? Laziness, mostly. Laziness and fear. I was too lazy to pull the TV and everything out, afraid that I wouldn't be able to figure it out, afraid that I wouldn't do it right and would screw it up, scared that I'd be too lazy to put everything back together and set the impetus in motion for another catastrophic mess (because this is usually how they start). I'm saying this, by the way, based on the fiasco that has been my VCR every time I move. It's all based in truth, folks, not just my neurosis.

So in a brazen move, I decided today that the DVD that came with my new Beck CD simply HAD to be watched. I pulled out the package of cables and owner's manual, and I set to work. In a matter of 10 minutes, I was hooked up and ready to go, and the DVD was spinning smoothly in its tray, projecting images of Mr. Hansen all over my TV screen, and I was one happy girl.

The reception on my TV is now worse than ever, though, which kind of sucks...but then again, there are only two shows I like to watch, and now I can always get the entire season when it comes out... on DVD!

Busted at the buffet!

As anyone who knows me is well aware, I don't cook. It's just something I was never really good at - or interested in - doing. Oh sure, I can boil pasta with the best of them, and I'm a self-proclaimed mac-n-cheese gourmet, but mostly I eat out. Not the best thing for a broke person with a weight problem, but whatever. I'm lazy.

So one day last week I got hungry around dinnertime, and I started thinking of what I wanted to eat. I was sick of pizza and Mighty Taco, and not at all in the mood for fast food, in fact. I decided just to get in my car and drive around until something struck my fancy. As I drove, I passed two grocery stores and thought about just breaking down and buying some actual groceries to cook myself something cheap and nutritious. That thought passed quickly, however, and I kept driving. I thought about going for Indian food, but again - not in the mood. I was hungry, and my stomach was screaming at me to feed it like Audrey II to Seymour Krelborn. But I just couldn't figure out what I wanted. All sorts of stuff sounded alternately good and awful, and then finally it came to me. The answer to my dilemma - the buffet.

Now, buffets depress me. Even the really swank casino buffets bum me out. Something about all that food and all those people shoveling it into their fat faces (myself included) just really makes me cringe at the level of gluttony. I also have this really weird hangup about eating in front of people (which is why I eat out alone most of the time), and an almost paralyzing fear of tripping and dropping my plate. Alas I went, by myself, and as I usually do, I started with a salad. No sooner had I speared the first leaf of romaine with my fork and brought it up to my gaping maw when I heard a familiar voice, "Hey, what's this lady doing here all by herself at the buffet?"

Good God. It was my coworker. I should have known, given the fact that I have this uncanny knack for running into people I know no matter where I go, that the odds were with me that I would see someone I knew. I'd actually had a fleeting thought to turn around on my way there, because something in my gut told me this would happen, but my hunger pangs were stronger, so I forged ahead. And look what happened. I was mortified.

So as I sat there stuffing my face, I tried to think of all sorts of clever ways to hide what was on my plate, or create diversions so that this coworker and her family would not see how many trips I made (I think it was three...four if you count the cup of horrid coffee). Mostly I prayed that she wouldn't go to work that night and announce to everyone that she'd seen me there. Because they wouldn't understand.

Note to self: next time, just go to the fucking grocery store.

Not-quite midlife crisis...in ink.

Behold my homage to the great Henry Rollins, plastered (painfully, I might add) on my back:



(Here's the original, on the man himself):


Lots of people have asked, "why?" I can't say I blame them. I mean, who gets tattoos of band logos on their backs, not to mention the logo of a hardcore band typically displayed with "Search and Destroy" above it? Certainly not 35-year-old women! Well, call it another phase in my not-quite-midlife crisis, but it definitely was not a whim. Like all my other tattoos, it was a well-thought-out decision and was years in the making before finally happening. And, for the record, my first one was the Urban Blight logo on my shoulder...so band logos are not anything new to this bod.

I've tried to explain it every which way I can. Rollins Band is my favorite. Henry Rollins is my hero. The album which sports the logo on its cover, The End of Silence, is one of my favorite RB albums (Come in and Burn is my favorite and means even more to me, but the razor skull x-ray just wasn't as appealing...) and is deeply significant to me. The details of the significance are personal, private, and profound. But you know what? At the end of the day, I needn't have to explain it to anyone.

As Henry himself said, "It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself."

So there. Search and destroy, indeed.

Death of a Memory

This past Wednesday morning I was reading through the paper, and I stopped to read the obituaries, as I normally do. Call it a morbid obsession, but I read them every day as part of my daily paper-reading. Anyway, I spotted the name of a childhood pal and thought, "no, that can't be the same guy." Sure enough, it was. It didn't say how he died, only that he'd passed away in the hospital on Tuesday.

Donnie was 25 days older than me, and we were in every class together from kindergarten on up through 6th grade. We grew up together, lived just a couple blocks from each other, and were constant buddies. Kids will be kids, of course, and we were teased for being friends (nyah, nyah, ... sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S....blah blah blah), but of all the friendships that came and went throughout the school years, ours was one of the few that endured and remained constant. We did hook up on and off during junior high, but it was more a matter of convenience than actual attraction. We were just really good friends.

So high school came around, and I went off to my hoity-toity private school, and then I moved to a different town, and I lost track of most of my old friends. I tried looking Donnie up a few times after I moved back here three years ago, but never really got around to calling him. It was more a "hey I wonder what ever became of him" sort of thing than a real desire to rekindle the friendship.

The wake was yesterday. I went. The waxy, pasty embalming process notwithstanding, he looked exactly as I'd remembered him from 20 years ago, only with shorter hair and a fuller beard. I stopped at the casket, said "Hey Donnie" and signed the guestbook before mustering the courage to go talk to his brother. Apparently Donnie had had quite a drinking problem and basically died of cirrhosis. At 35 years old, his liver just couldn't take it anymore and shut down. Fucked up.

The weird part was how I was like, "oh wow, that's sad and it sucks" but in a sort of "disconnect" mode while I was at the funeral home...and then halfway home I just burst into tears over it. As I shed my tears, I realized I wasn't necessarily crying for him, per se, because it's not like my life is affected directly by his absence in it. It was like it suddenly hit me that this kid I grew up with, was good friends with, played with, fought with, laughed with, partied with, and I'm sure talked about our futures during all of this...it's all gone for him. And he was just so goddamned young. I keep moaning and groaning about how I'm "so old" but man, it's not time to die yet.

Rest in Peace, Donnie Roehling: 1971-2006. Don't give Miss Sinnot too much trouble up there, okay?

Please read the archives!

The archives are full of cool stuff that I really wish people would read. As I approach the one-year anniversary of Planet Deedums on Blogspot, I've concluded that last year's stuff was way more entertaining and engaging than my most recent whiny-diary entries. If you've been here all along, you've likely seen it, too.

So please, indulge yourself in some classic musings of yore. You'll be glad you did!

Too bad I don't get free earplugs anymore

It's occurred to me recently that I've become a little self-absorbed in my posts, mainly obsessed with the dating thing. (Yeah, I know, I hear you all going "a little?!" Quiet now, the lot of you). It's like this quest for a decent, smart, childless, nice guy has become this all-consuming thing; it's less about the actual guy and more about the pursuit at this point. While amusing and entertaining, it's also exhausting and frustrating. Therefore I shall put it aside for a while.

You're welcome.

Anyway, I've got a new obsession coming up right around the corner - I start my drum lessons on Thursday! I am told I should wear earplugs when I play, which I'm kind of thinking is a little like telling a blind person to put on sunglasses. But yeah, I wish I'd done this back when I was working for the safety place and could get earplugs for mad cheap - at least then I could give them away to my neighbors.

Time to vent the spleen!

Ever put your foot so far into your mouth you’re not sure if you’ll ever get the taste of shoe leather out? Well, yeah. That’s what I did recently. But that’s not what this entry is about, since I’m more or less hoping it’ll blow itself over and life can proceed as normal. Until I open my big mouth again, that is. So much for resolving to stop giving a shit what people think of me.

No, kids, what today’s entry is about is…food. Yeah, food. And men. But not just any old food, not just any old men. I’m talking about my love affair with Thai and Indian food, specifically, and the fact that I’ve discovered that the single male population of this area has an outright aversion to Eastern cuisine. Thai and Indian are my favorite foods ever, and obviously I don't really get to eat that stuff unless I go out. So when someone asks me out to dinner, I immediately suggest Thai and their reaction (at least the last three guys I've gone out with) has been "Ew, NO WAY." It's really disheartening. My third choice is Middle Eastern, which gets shot down just as quickly.

So that's why I get stuck eating *yawn* Italian. Or, *snore* "American" food. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is good, too, (and hell, let's face it, if I don't have to cook it or pay for it, I'll eat it), but shit, where is people's sense of adventure? Maybe it's because I grew up in a totally white-bread, Anglo family with a mom who cooked straight out of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (you know the one, with the red and white checkered cover, uh-huh, yep, that one), but I've found that people who've done so can go either way: either they crave more variety and interesting things (like I do) or they stay stuck in their meat-n-potatoes rut (like the guys I seem to be hooking up with lately). I’m finding a lot of compromises being made at my expense lately, and frankly, it’s really beginning to piss me off.

Now, my faithful blog-watchers, you all know that I'm a strong-willed, fiercely independent, opinionated, feisty, stubborn woman. I might not be the prettiest flower in the garden, I'll never be on the cover of Cosmo, but I'm sharp and I'm fun. But you know, deep down inside is a girl who just wants some company, someone to talk to and hang out with and go places and do stuff with, someone besides my friends (though I love them all), and someone who's not just a (sensitive readers, pleas avert your eyes) “buddy with benefits” (yeah, I totally edited that). I want the total package - intellectual, emotional, and physical stimulation and fulfillment. Someone who can be a companion and help share the things in life that bring both of us joy. However, I'm finding that the things that bring me joy (music, art, history, architecture, books, coffee, wine...) don't bring single men my age the same kind of joy they bring me - and in recent cases are actual sources of repulsion for some. This guy I went out with last night - a metalsmith/jewelry designer, no less - told me he's never been to the Albright-Knox because "Honestly, there's nothing there that I can't see in a book." Oh. my. god. And he calls himself an artist. Wow. That'd be like saying you don't want to go see your favorite band play live because you can just sit home and listen to the record.

I’m no art snob myself, but there is something honestly breathtaking about standing in front of an original piece of work. What immediately comes to mind is Pollock’s Convergence. No image in a book can ever command the kind of feeling you get standing in front of the original – the thing is a beast! It’s like 13 feet wide and 9 feet tall. There is an energy, an excitement, a certain emotional response that is evoked from stepping up and looking at an original Van Gogh, a Mondrian, A Lichtenstein...or how about Chuck Close's Janet, the nuances and details of the hundreds of tiny circles that make up her face, her hair, her earrings, her glasses, and knowing that the guy painted this from a wheelchair with a fucking brace to hold the brush to his hand...you just can’t get that from a book, I’m sorry. You just cannot.

Anyway, my last relationship having been long-distance, I'm used to being alone, used to going out alone or with friends to do stuff, not really used to combining the two things. So when I finally got over jerkface and decided to put myself out there again, I realized how much I don't know about the opposite sex, about the game and how to play it. I'm learning quickly that "Sex and the City" isn't so fictitious. I just can’t decide if I’m a Carrie or a Samantha.

I suppose it would be whichever one really likes Thai food.

First entry of 2006: Warning, it's a downer.

Fear not, faithful blog-watchers, I am back. A lot can happen in two months, and while I will attempt to pace myself and break the "catch-ups" into several shorter entries, there's a lot to cram in here.

So anyway, you may want to sit back and get comfortable for this one - it promises to be quite lengthy. And as promised in this post's title, this is not going to be my typical wry witty stuff - so if depressing stuff isn't your thing, you might want to skip this one and wait for the next entry, which I promise will not be so bumming.

*takes deep breath*

Okay. As most of you know, my beloved kitty, Lepew, passed away three days before Thanksgiving. It's been a rough adjustment for me, and while I've been longing to write out my feelings about losing her, I really just hadn't had the strength until now.

As we approach what would have been her 19th birthday (February 28th - we'll never know the exact date, but that's the one I'd made up based on the vet's estimation of her age when I got her), it's starting to only now really sink in that she's gone. If you knew Lepew, you knew how she had this awesome resilient, enduring, almost magical, other-worldly quality to her - like she was going to live forever. Starting with the circumstances under which she came into my life (thrown out of a car as a malnourished and abused kitten,left for dead in a ditch outside my house, and narrowly escaping life in a shelter by a completely shocking display of sympathy by my father), she was a weird but miraculous creature (not to mention the cutest one ever). She would disappear and reappear seemingly out of nowhere, like she could walk through walls. She was strictly an indoor cat, but would escape and put me through hell trying to find her, only to turn up right behind me, looking at me as if to say, "what are you freaking out about? I've been here the whole time!" If she weren't so damn cute it would have been creepy.

One time in Chicago I spent an entire day canvassing the neighborhood with flyers and kitty treats after discovering my back door wide open and Lepew nowhere in the apartment, only to come home to a message from my upstairs neighbor telling me that he'd found her in the hallway outside his door. Mind you, this was the inside hallway, the door to which I could not recall opening at all that day. Another time when we lived in New Hampshire she got out and we found her stuck in the wall in the boiler room of our house. Just shortly before she passed away, I woke up in the middle of the night to the dog whining to go out. When I opened the door and stepped outside, I looked across the street and saw Lepew, scampering across the street like she owned it. She apparently had gotten out earlier that evening, undetected.

No matter what, when she was lost or sick or even when her age started catching up and she began developing problems with her thyroid and her kidneys, she always came through with flying colors. So when she got sick so suddenly that Sunday night in November, I just couldn't process the finality of it. It never really sunk in that it could be the end. Even as I watched her struggle to walk, as I watched the "third eye" creep over her beautiful yellow-green eyes, as I wiped the drool and snot off her face and begged her to be okay, I just couldn't believe it. I just kept thinking it was going to be okay, she was going to get better. I was going to wake up the next day and she'd be yowling for food, climbing on my head, drinking from the toilet again. Even when she wasn't fine the next day, even when I called the vet and made the appointment for the following day to put her down, even as I prepared myself by shutting all the doors in the house so that if she needed to die at home she wouldn't crawl off and hide to do it, I just kept thinking it wasn't going to happen. I was going to come home from work that night, and everything would be fine. Alas, it was not to be.

She died while I was at work, something I felt so terrible about, because I'd wanted to be with her in her last moments - the only consolation I was deriving from deciding to put her to sleep was that it would allow me to do so, in fact. She just couldn't hold out, though, and died in front of the fireplace in the living room. She was not alone, I kept telling myself. She was in the company of Alex, her canine companion of more than 13 years. I'm sure that her old canine companion, Digger, and her Cousin Tootsie came to get her and showed her the way over the "Rainbow Bridge," (that special place, for those of you who may not be familiar, where our pets go when they leave us).

Even still, nearly three months later, I expect to see her sitting on the toilet seat when I open the shower curtain. I reach up to pet her when I'm lying on the sofa. I still, in my half-awake state every morning, instinctively try to be careful to not trip over her as I make my way to the kitchen, where it still invokes a sense of slight discombobulation when I don't see her bowls on the floor or her food on top of the refrigerator. I still call out for her sometimes, like I'm expecting that she'll just come walking through the wall when she's good and ready to come out . . .

And you know, maybe that's because she really is still here -- I just can't see her. She really was a weird little cat. :-)