It is raining and chilly today. I wish I had a full day to just snuggle under the blankets. That’s not what my day will look like, though I could sneak about an hour of that in, if I really wanted to.

It is the last day of school today, and dismissal is at noon. Unfortunately, I have to start After School at noon, and will have some kids for a while. Maybe even some until close to 6 PM. Tonight there is an end-of-year celebration at a classmate of Annie’s house. It starts 5:30 PM. I hope I am able to leave school before 6 PM tonight. Next year’s academic calendar indicates that there will not be after school provided on the last day of school. This is good for me, but of course, not so good for working parents whose jobs don’t give a hoot that it’s the last day of school!

We don’t live in a very family friendly country. I think it may be getting a little bit better, though. Some things seem to be shifting, and certainly some companies are trying to do right by the parents they employ. It always seems to me that the people who need each dollar the most are the ones who are most penalized by the system. Poor folk. People working by the hour, and not much per hour at that, really get screwed when they have to get their kids from school earlier than usual. I wish it weren’t so.

So, I have about a bit more than one hour before I head back to the school. This weather sucks, because we’ll be all couped up indoors. I should think of something fabulous to do with the kids, but right now I’m thinking we’ll watch a movie. Some kids will be fine with that, others will complain — and rightly so– because we did that yesterday.

I am looking back on my first full year of being an after school teacher. I think I did pretty well, considering the various challenges I had. I would like to do better next year. Specifically, I would like to increase and improve my communication to parents. I never started the email list that I meant to, and that’s just dumb. It would have been really helpful, so why didn’t I make one? I don’t know. I think I just got swept up in all the other things I do.

Next year, I’d also like to find additional ways of getting my own kids to be elsewhere during after school. I think they are too exhausted by the current system, even if they mostly like after school very much. Drob has been very dedicated, and he is a wonderful father. He has been making himself available to pick up the girls, or sometimes just Carla, early from after school once a week. I hope we can do that again. Their grandpa also has picked up the kids sometimes, so hopefully that can happen again next year. I wonder if Cammy can get them sometimes next year? I don’t know what she’ll be doing.

Yes, gentle readers (all, what, four of you?), Cammy still lives with us. Things are quite different now, though. She kind of quit being our nanny last summer, and got a full time job doing something else. This left me without back up during the school year. Unfortunately, her job ended, and she’s looking for work again. I wish I could offer her the kind of work she wants, but there is no way I can get her health insurance, or anything like full time pay. Not sure if she’s ever going to go back to school. Even though she does technically live here, I see her only about once a week, maybe twice. And briefly. She comes, changes her clothes, and leaves. Obviously, this is not the peachy situation it once was, back when she was helping with the kids on a regular basis. She does still babysit from time to time, but that doesn’t really constitute the type of support I was looking for when I invited her to live with us.

My depression being what it currently is, I haven’t really made any efforts to discuss this situation with her. One problem I’m having is that I seem to be withdrawing from people around me, though not the children. I feel like it’s hard to communicate. I hope that after I finish my teaching work (in two weeks), that I can work on my emotional health. I am just not feeling like myself, and it’s a problem. I believe this will pass, but may be a bit rocky for a while.

One good thing, though… the rain is good for my garden. So that’s looking on the bright side!

Yesterday I managed to put more plants into the ground, in spite of the hungry bunny patrol that has once again hopped through and under the fence around the garden. Damn those cute little bunnies!

Apparently they like petunia blossoms, as well as little baby sunflower plants. The “sonic spike” which buzzes every 30 seconds apparently has no effect on bunnies. Well, it was worth a try. I think I might have to go with a hot pepper spray on the ornamentals to deter bunnies. I’ve also started to add a layer of chicken wire around the fence, in hopes of closing up the holes a bit more, making it more challenging for the little critters to enter the garden.

I’d LOVE to be able to just go and do more garden work, but the club where my community garden is located is not yet open full time. It is only open on the weekends until June 22, or thereabouts. So far, I’ve put in 3 varieties of tomatoes (Early Girl, Roma, Yellow Pear), four varieties of basil, three peppers, cucumbers (seeds just sprouted!), sunflowers, petunias, marigolds, cauliflower, watermelon (seeds), green beans, yellow wax beans, and swiss chard (seeds). I’ve filled about two thirds of the space!

I also have eggplant and okra which I’d like to grow, as well as cantaloupe. I also want to add nasturtiums, but don’t have any plants or seeds as of yet. I read that nasturtiums are good for protecting / helping melons. I would really, really, really like to see my melons succeed this year – both cantaloupes and watermelon. As I recall, the bunnies are pretty fond of watermelon vines as well as the tender petunia flowers that they gobbled up so far.

My mind could get full just on garden thoughts alone.

Yet there’s so much more going on in my brain right now. There’s tax issues to be resolved with the city (again?!?). There’s summer camp, which I’m running for two weeks, (one week from now, yikes!). There’s shopping to be done for Carla’s horseback riding camp (she needs some low boots.) There’s the never ending housework — and the house currently is a real wreck. UGH!

There’s so much, I’m overwhelmed. I do wish it was just time to think about the garden and nothing else. There’s also the yard and the hedges, and the gardens at home which need attention. I’d happily give it to them, too, but for the other house work which needs doing.

I also have to get a large amount of book-keeping, billing, and bill paying done for the small biz that I am putatively running. You can’t pay bills if you don’t send out the billing, and you can’t send out the billing if you don’t enter the book-keeping information. And you can’t keep track of bills if you don’t enter the expenses into the computer! ARGH!

Nasturtiums. I need nasturtiums.

Yesterday Drob told me he was concerned that I seemed “out of control.”

Oh, I thought, you noticed?

Only, I don’t know if “control” is the right word. I think maybe slightly out of order might be accurate. I don’t really feel right. I am not getting enough done, perhaps. Or I’m finding myself in these brain loops, my thoughts disorganized and swirl from one topic to another.

Last weekend I also stayed up all night and didn’t even feel tired. I felt perfectly alert and just kept doing housecleaning. I was doing very thorough cleaning. I cleaned WALLS and FLOORS. I scrubbed down places that hadn’t been cleaned, well, ever. I took down a dirty curtain from a window, washed it, was dissatisfied with the result, and then I attempted to dye it red. It came out pink, but I like it anyway.

Was that a manic night? I wonder? I did it because my mom was coming to visit. I did it because my house seemed to be so dingy and dirty. I did it because I was worried about Lucky, and rightly so, since he died a couple days later. I wanted to get my house to a comfortable state.

Now, we’re a few days later. The house is falling apart again. I guess this house really requires a daily vigilance, and for that, I don’t seem to have the where-with-all.

Daily laundry, daily dishes. What I’m doing instead? I’m thinking. I’m reading email. I’m relating to people. I’m thinking and planning for my job working with children. I’m researching projects for the summer camp I’m going to run. I’m wondering how to get more kids to sign up for camp. There’s much to think about– and my internal dialogue sometimes prevents me from getting things done in the real world.

This morning I didn’t feel like taking a shower. I’d taken one yesterday, and still felt perfectly clean. But D wanted me to shower– we used to always shower together. (Most couples do this, right?) I just wanted more sleep. Am I slacking in my hygeine? Is this a depression thing?

My real test for whether I am having bad depression problems is when thoughts of death go through my head. This hasn’t been happening, at least not like it did in the past. I have had fleeting death thoughts, like WHAT IF kind of thoughts, which are not the same as COME HITHER, OH GRIM REAPER or the sad, self-hating kind of I DESERVE TO DIE, I AM A VILE PIECE OF TRASH…. these thoughts have been unwelcome visitors to my mind in the past.

I am glad that I’m not thinking these kinds of thoughts, as they are very upsetting. I am mostly doing pretty well. A few times recently, however, I’ve found the kind of death thought showing up that run along the lines of “Oh, dear, it would be such a SHAME if I couldn’t go to work today, like, if I got run over by a bus because my shoelace was undone and I tripped and the bus driver happened to not notice me…..”

Or, “Gee, I sure hope my kitten wasn’t actually rabid and we didn’t know it…. he did bite me three times. I sure hope I don’t die from rabies. Who would teach in my place?”

These implausible, unlikely, and uncomfortable thoughts of death are quite fleeting. But are they a symptom of my depression worsening? I guess I could ask my doctor. Wouldn’t that be a revolutionary thought?

That adorable little kitten died the day before yesterday, early in the morning. I’d held him all night, trying very hard to give him some nourishment. He could not or would not drink– not from a kitten bottle, not from a dropper. He was fading fast and I knew it. Every now and again he’d make sad, sad, mewling noises, and stretch his body out in a gruesome and sad way. So sad.

Yesterday was Annie’s sixth birthday, too. She came to our bedroom in the morning of her birthday. “Good morning, Happy Birthday,” I told her. “Lucky died,” said Drob, explaining my sad face and the little still bundle of black and white fluff still sitting on the bed.

It was very hard to be cheery and full of excitement. Lucky was just a tiny, sick little kitten and there was nothing more we could do for him. Annie was not as affected by his death as I was. I think she just understood, that he could die, from the beginning. He’d been so obviously ill over the last few days. I was ever hopeful.

Still, the bigger lesson is there, and it’s not an easy one. The little kitten showed us that you can care, and offer comfort even when it doesn’t result in a happy ending. I showed my children that you can care, and still lose something precious. Life does go on when there is a loss. That’s an important lesson.

Another lesson here is that when you think about it, you realize that ALL life on earth is temporary. We live just a little while. What will we do when we are here? Where will we go when we go? We don’t know– but we can think about the impact we make on others during our little lives. We can love large. We can offer hope. We can try, and we can fail, but that never negates the trying itself.

It’s all cats all the time lately.

I found this tiny little kitten in the middle of the street, no momma cat around to be seen. Poor little thing.

It’s pouring rain right now– it has been a dreadfully wet week. Today we had cloudy skies and the rain held off during the day but there was no sun. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, rain, rain, rain. No wonder this little spunky kitten has such a bad cold.

ACHOOO!

Imagine this tiny little kitten, out in all that awful rain! And where was momma cat?

He’s about 6 weeks old, which is about when kittens wean. However, he doesn’t know how to eat regular food yet, so we are dropper feeding him! Such a little bitty thing he is!

The girls are calling him “Lucky.”

I can’t remember a more active, productive, and social weekend than this past one.

I am so tired, and it’s such a Monday.

It was a good weekend, though, and I still can’t understand where I got so much energy?! Saturday morning was a flurry of house cleaning to ready the house for an appraisal, while I shooed the kids outside to play with three neighbor kids. Somehow we managed to at least make the house seem more like average people live here, instead of say, crack addicted squatters. And, how it was possible for me to go out on Saturday night, get a tad lit, and come home at 3 AM… and then rise and shine at 8 AM the next morning, when I brewed some coffee, made pancakes from scratch for my family plus my friend and her daughter who’d slept over to babysit while I was out (thanks!!!!)… and the pancakes were GOOD! They had a choice of plain, apple, banana, walnut, and chocolate chip, or some combo therein.

Then after my friend and her daughter went home, I raced to the food store, did a quick grocery shopping just in time to get home for me to karmic-ly repay for the babysitting, as Annie’s friend Maggie came over for a 6 hour playdate. And it was hot out. We had fun with water play, I can tell you that for sure.

Plus, somehow, before the weekend was out I managed to clean out all the cat boxes, do about 5 loads of laundry and thoroughly clean the guinea pigs cage.

PLUS, I even managed to squeeze in a phonecall to my mom. PHEW!
I am exhausted just thinking about it. I need another weekend to relax, now, please?

If you aren’t a cat person, you might want to just skip this post. It’s boringly about cats.

Somehow, the cat we adopted in January managed to get pregnant. This is a mystery, because our two male cats are fixed, and we have been careful to keep the new cat inside. The plan was to nurse her back to health, then get her spayed. I had an appointment earlier this week, but our vet told me she was pregnant! And due in about two or three weeks!

Seems IMPOSSIBLE. I am really puzzled.

Meanwhile one of my male cats somehow injured his tail, it’s horribly mangled at the tip of it. I took him to the vet this morning; and the really bad news is that the vet thinks he will have to amputate the tip of the tail. Poor kitty! I feel just awful! How could this happen?

A part of me is saying I should get a second opinion on the pregnant cat and on the tail amputation. I mean, all this worry and what if he’s wrong? Suppose the cat is not pregnant? And we’re all hyped up over nothing? And suppose there is a way to save my other cat’s tail?

But it costs a lot of money to go the vet, and this is a vet we’ve known and trusted for a long time. So why would I doubt his opinion? I guess it’s because logic dictates that two fixed male cats can’t impregnate a female cat, no matter how much she yowls when she’s in heat. And oh boy, did she yowl and stir up a fuss. And she’s stopped being in heat, now that she’s pregnant. So I shouldn’t doubt it.

Besides, if she’s pregnant, that will be confirmed by the birth of kittens, so we could just wait and see.

I don’t like living with uncertainty. I want to know what’s coming. I am unhappy when I have to wait and see.

There are other things going on in life right now, and in no particular order, here’s a list. Not for you (we’ve already established this is a dull post, okay?) but for me. I just want to get this out there, boring or not. Things going on:

- house refinancing so appraiser coming tomorrow, must tidy up. A lot.
- there’s all this spare furniture on the front porch. Ugh. So cluttered. And with boxes of crap, too. UGH!
- there’s a mountain of laundry
- I’m hungry
- I had a cup of coffee so far today, and that’s all. It was weak. Ugh.
- There’s a house warming party tomorrow night for some of our Child-less Friends. Hanging out with them is probably going to be fun, but somehow looking forward to it is depressing me.
- Carla’s room smells bad. Perpetually. Some kitty peed in there; the carpet needs to go; plus she still is wetting the bed pretty often. So there’s a lot of bad smell. I feel horrible about that.
- It’s supposedly going to be HOT this weekend. I don’t want that. It will make all the bad smells worse, I guarantee.
- There are bills to be paid.
- I need stamps. Why should it be so freaking annoying to get some freaking stamps?
- By now, I’m REALLY hungry.
- I’m tired, too.
- What a sucky morning.
- The cat litter boxes are P.U.
- UGH. Just, UGH.

It’s here, my week off from work. But I don’t feel happy and relaxed. I feel stressed and pressed for time. I have a bunch of things that I would like to do, and I don’t know where to begin. At the same time, I want to curl up under the blankets and nap all day. At the same time, I want to go see 3 films today, it’s the last day of the Philly Cine Fest. And there’s approximately 75 loads of laundry that need to be done. Because Carla has no clean pants to wear. She’s literally walking around the house with nothing on her lower half. And it is chilly. We had HAIL earlier for dog’s sake. And we’re out of cat food. And there’s meat in the fridge that needs to be cooked into something. And there’s a pile of dishes the size of Miami in the sink. And the living room needs painting. And the garden needs tending. And there are accounts to be balanced. And. And. And. And.

And the kids say I should make crafts with them. And go to the zoo. And. And. And.

And I have my period. And I’m out of tampons.

We’ve decided Enough is Enough!

We’re moving to a small farming community in a rural area. Our new community is cooperatively raising chickens and ostriches for meat. We’ll be helping to grow an all-organic garden for the family’s consumption. I’ll be home schooling the kids, but mainly they’ll be schooling themselves along with the other children who live on the communal property. There are about 5 families already doing this who have kids close in age to Carla and Annie.

Reading books and doing hands-on projects around the farm will be their education. We’ve simply had it with the complexities of life in the city, and dealing with education in a school environment. We’re tired of the daily grind, running around, with meetings at work and school.

Done! We are done with all, and we look forward to our future life of simple, hard work.