Sasha the Guinea Pig passed away suddenly on Valentine’s Day, 2009, tenderly held in the arms of her primary caregiver, at approximately 1:35 PM. The cause of death was unknown. Sasha is survived by two sisters and her mother.

Sasha was born two summers ago in Philadelphia, to a store-bought sow who had arrived in her new home pregnant, unbeknownst to the mother sow’s adoptive human family. Sasha was one of three guinea piglets, all dressed up finely in black and white. All three were bright eyed and ready to consume thrice their body weight in lettuce, timothy hay, carrots, and pretty much any crunchy produce one could provide them.

After a beautiful infancy with her two sisters, Sasha and sister Daisy bid farewell to their mother and sister, and went to live with two human sisters and their family. Their lives were filled with fresh timothy hay, hand picked greens, lazy afternoons in the yard munching fresh grass, and many loving snuggles.

It is with great sadness that her human family laid Sasha to rest eternally under the mulberry tree in their back yard. She will be missed.

In lieu of flowers, her family requests that donations be made to your local animal shelter or other animal-loving cause.

I hate it when things just sit, unresolved. Could be something minor, major, doesn’t matter, but if it just sits on the back burner, and I have to keep track of it, it just really bugs me.

Right now, there are a bunch of unresolved issues. The one that weighs on me worst is this work situation, and I’m not even comfortable writing about it here, in the moderately anonymous forum of my personal blog. It is unsettling at best. I feel like I’m carrying a weight around, and it just goes on and on.

Another weight: we’re being sued by the city for failing to file taxes. The same ones that we’d paid an accountant $600 to file. Um. It’s not clear if they were filed, it’s confusing as hell. To make things worse, D had to re-do the taxes because they were done wrong. D fixed them, and I am going to deliver them in person tomorrow, trying to find my way through the city’s offices to see where to get the revised forms submitted. So that they can allow us to not have to appear in court. And drop the $5000 punitive fee. Sigh. I am nervous about this, as I don’t know what I am doing exactly. It’s an adventure, I suppose.

Another one: My dad apparently lost a lot of money from his investments, money that he was counting on for living expenses. He still gets social security, and a pension, but it’s hard living on those fixed incomes. He is re-doing his will (this is a good thing) and wants to know whether he should leave me his house, or leave it to both my brother and myself, and have us just sell it and split the proceeds. I think that given the economy now, having the house stay in the family longer would be better: why sell it when the market is so awful anyway? Of course we don’t know WHEN the Time will Come, so who knows on that anyway.

But yeah, we want the house, say D and I, and my dad is going to get his papers in order. Hope he does it.

Things get so ugly and awful when people die without putting their estate into order first.

Speaking of such things, I don’t have a will. That is bad, too. Anyone with kids should have a will, with contingencies and information, and what would happen IF Something Bad Occurs. Another unresolved thing.

All of this makes me want to hide under the blankets with a few cats and just escape.

Last night I played a card game here at home with D and Cammy, got a little silly. There was wine. It was fun, and relaxing. A brief escape from feeling so overwhelmed, tired, defeated by the world. Of course, today, it’s back to reality and I keep thinking how nice it would be to escape again.

I’m in a weird place right now. I have this crisis going on with work but I feel like I can’t really write about it here. I am only thinly veiled in anonymity and I wouldn’t want this blog to end up on the wrong people’s monitors.

My mood is so-so, and I have a bad cold. My drippy nose and low energy levels are not helping with the crisis.

My sense of support around the crisis is somewhat minimal.

UGH. Sniff.

It’s good advice. Whatever you’re doing, make it be your own. Do what you know. Do what you love. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Trust yourself.

Also: don’t fail to refill your medications causing you to miss doses. That would be bad.

My mother buys stuff for my kids, then tells them over the phone that it’s a surprise, and that they can’t have it until they come visit. Then she tells them that they have to tell me & D that they want to visit her.

This blatant manipulation of my kids is so obnoxious. Luckily, my kids are relatively un-materialistic (for kids). They aren’t DYING to find out what they got, and they know that we’ll visit my mom when I am good and ready. Which is to say, we’ll go for Easter, like always. End of story.

Why must she be such a manipulative jerk? Really takes the glow off of an otherwise lovely day. Grrr!

Happiness – Sledding – Snowday = Cuddly Cat
Cuddly Cat + Snowday = Sledding + Happiness

Math is so much fun, isn’t it?

I’m snuggled up in bed with Carla and Annie. We’re watching my favorite Miyazaki film: Spirited Away, with our new kitty, Saffron. Saffron is a big time sweetie, and eccentric as well. She washes her paws– I kid you not!– by sticking them in her water and swishing them around. She especially does this shortly after using her litter box. So tidy! She also loves people food of all kinds. So far, she’s tried and liked pizza, scrambled eggs, ham, turkey sausage, milk, cheerios (both wet and dry), brussel sprouts, and macaroni and cheese. Unfortunately this diet leads to quite a bit of flatulence. We can’t blame her, though, after all, we allowed her to eat that stuff!

D is completely smitten with this cat, and I have to admit I’m quite sweet on her as well. She sits on my lap, something that my other three cats won’t do. She also is quite talkative, which is amusing.