Oh No

I have just finished reading Chapter 4 in "The Artist's Way", which I have admittedly been reading again for way more than four weeks, but for whatever reason I have not been terribly diligent. I hope to be more so this week, which means that I will not be reading or watching TV for one week. That wouldn't be so bad if I had a job or any sort of hobby that took me out of the house ever but, alas, I guess that is the point. Apparently I should be finding some sort of bubbling up of energy and creativity as a result of taking away the distractions of my life. It makes sense, it really does, but I am barely twenty minutes in and already stir crazy. (This is due, in part, to the very interesting new book I started reading called "The Shadow of the Wind" that my old boss gave me. I don't really want to put it down for week. It is also due to the Dexter Season 2 DVD that we will be getting in the mail, the two "The Office" episodes on the TiVo, and the "Battlestar Gallactica" that we have been avoiding because of the raw emotional state that the returning episode left us in last month. There are three new ones crossing their arms and tapping their toes and impatiently raising an eyebrow at me every time I turn the tv on. Well, ha. I can't watch you, it is my assignment this week.

Speaking of assignments, though, I also have two articles to read for class as well as a midterm to study for. But I realized something about that. Yes, I am a good student, but that doesn't seem to matter here at all. The Academic side is really sad and quite frankly a joke. Individuals who do half the work (the half that doesn't require reading the articles and writing responses) still get A's in the class. So maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe not reading this week is somehow serendipitously tied to my own growth, seeing as how one of the things that keeps bringing me down is how mediocrity is rewarded and hard work is never recognized. Okay, then. Maybe it is time to allow that mediocrity to do whatever it wants while I recognize that it is also okay to not fulfill that particular goal this week as part of a greater growth that I am currently not receiving at school.

Fairly certain that you will get LOTS more posts, though.

Cat Surgery

I watch too many hospital procedurals. So many, from the ER of my youth to the House of today, that I am familiar with the medical language, the red-tape bureaucracy, the emotional dilemmas. It is something else entirely when you, in real life, are presented with a document that informs you that your loved one will be in the best possible care but you still have to sign a consent waiver indemnifying the doctors if anything goes wrong resulting in injury, disability, or death. It is an impossible signature to make.

Even if that loved one is your cat.

My darling boy, my sweet, loving, cherished one had surgery today. He was under anesthesia for four hours. Longer than they anticipated so he was dosed with additional drugs halfway through. He loves me. Completely. I am his favorite thing in the world and I signed a piece of paper saying that it was okay if they killed him. That I understood it was, as all surgeries are, a risky procedure. Blue ink on a fresh laser print legal document and then they took him away, all smiles and reassurances, and I left him there all day.

He is fine. The surgery went well, despite the delay, and he was reported to have been an ideal patient. All of the nurses and doctors love him. One of them told me that she was jealous that my cat was so sweet and loving. But he loves me. And I can't help but feel that I did him wrong somehow, even though he needed the surgery and would have been a great deal of pain very shortly had he not had it.

It does make me worry about kids, though. It was hard for me to sign that piece of paper. Hard for me to say goodbye. I am a natural born pessimist. I always assume the worst, which means that I am rewarded with good news a great deal of the time. But feeling as if I wouldn't see him again, believing, in a horrible part of my chest, that he was being taken away in a maroon carrier to be laid to rest on an operating table was painful. It was awful. If my cat, even though I love him dearly and would leap in front of a Mack truck to save him, elicited this much of a response, my children will drive me to insanity. My own flesh and blood will permanently raise my hackles in defensive mode. My soccer mom arm will eternally be outstretched in support of the appropriately worn seat belt. My momdar will sense every broken curfew, every white lie, every broken heart with stripped down sensory reactions.

Parenthood is going to be a bitch.

(Side bar to my parents, there is not a little one on the way, this is merely conjecture. Sorry if I got your hopes up.)