I'm just a little black rain cloud.

A list of random things that have made me cry about my father's death (months later):

• A Glidden paint store hat
• The selling of his Barracuda
• The new Star Trek trailer
• American Pickers
• Adopting Vera
• A sunset
• Little Debbie Cakes (Oatmeal Pies = His favorite)
• Painting Mom's living room
• Having paint-speckled forearms after painting at Mom's
• Resaving his last voice mail on my phone
• Coffee
• My apartment
• Father's Day 2013
• The thought of having children
• Chipping a piece off of my bookcase that he'd painted for me while I was moving it
• Recommending his chiropractor, who was his best friend, to a friend
• His work building full of tools and boxes
• Grilling hamburgers
• My wedding anniversary
• Hugging my father-in-law
• Seeing a bunny hop across Mom's lawn
• Removing him from my emergency contacts on my work profile
• The photo I had set for his contact photo in my phone showing up when Mom called me because she'd changed her profile photo on Facebook.
• Driving his truck to the shop to be worked on
• Ensure
• Not remembering the last time I bought a battery for my car
• The first warm day of the year

...and, for some reason, today. Just because.

Hey, remember that time we adopted a cat?

Ever since we got married, I've begged J for a pet. We talked cats, dogs, hedgehogs, and chinchillas over the last year, and finally, my sweet husband, despite his allergies, finally caved and said we could adopt an animal. If we're being completely honest here, I went a little crazy bouncing between shelter websites and Craigslist.

We attended an adoption event on April 6 and looked at an adorable little Manx kitten that I had seen on a local shelter's website. I picked her up and fell in love with her, nuzzled her, pouted a little, put her back in the cage, and squeezed J's hand and told him we needed to leave or I'd take her home. He nudged me in the direction of the adoption table and encouraged me to get her. I was over the moon. I went back (nay, ran back) to get her, handed her to J, signed all the papers, and cried all the way home because I was so excited.

Sittin' pretty on the couch, watching J come inside from grilling.

We named her Vera (after Jayne's very favorite gun) (my husband is a Browncoat and I love it). Vera was snuggly and adorable and bouncy just like any other kitten. She loved sitting on shoulders and head-booping. She made air-biscuits when you picked her up. She pounced on anything that moved.

But.

She also howled. Like, howled. I've owned many cats in my lifetime, but none have make noises even close to her howls. She howled every time she was alone, which was unfortunate for everyone involved because while hubs was attempting to adjust to her presence by eating Zyrtec like candy, we knew that allowing her to sleep in the same room as us would never be an option. Also, we have elderly neighbors who absolutely never ever ever make a sound and we didn't want to be rude to them by leaving our screaming kitten alone for them to hear while we worked 8-10 hour shifts.

Every single night we had her, right before we laid down to sleep, we put her in the guest bathroom with her food, litter, bed, and toys, and we laid down to sleep. Every single night we had her, she howled all. night. long.

The first night we had her, we figured it was because she was scared and in a new environment. The second night was more of the same. Every night after that got worse, not better, because she was more comfortable in her environment and she was less apprehensive about jumping onto the counter top and knocking every single thing off of it. One night she howled, figured out how to knock over the garbage can, and rolled around in it all night. Howwwwwwl rollrollrollthumpHOWWWWWLthumpTHUMP. Two rooms separate our bedroom and our spare bathroom -- and she was still loud enough to keep us awake. It was puppy behavior. I've never ever met a cat in my life (until Vera) who flipped out about being left alone. Incessantly. For hours on end.

To add to that grief, J's allergies immediately flared up within hours of bringing her home. He doubled up Zyrtec and Benedryl and still had itchy eyes and a stuffy-sneezy nose. Between being kept awake due to howling/thumps of destruction coming from the guest bathroom and being unable to sleep due to the guilt I felt for causing my poor husband's head to explode in an allergic reaction, I couldn't take it. I told him I wanted to re-home her, for his health and for our sanity.

We talked to a few people we knew, and luckily, one of them wanted to take her. The person who took her a) isn't allergic and b) has other cats, so she will be blissful and she will never have to go from a warm snuggly lap to a boxed bed in a lonely room at the end of the night. She'll even have friends to snuggle and play with when her owners are at work. It'll be a better environment for her since she's such a dependent cuddlebutt.  

Our last night with Vera. She likes for you to hold her paw or arm.

I'm not going to lie about it -- I'm bummed out. Truly. So is Hubs. We grew attached to her quickly -- it was impossible not to. When she wasn't wreaking havoc in our bathroom, she was a fantastic, picture-perfect kitten full of love... but her personality was exponentially more codependent than we were hoping for and we were not the right people to meet her needs, so we gave her up to someone who could. 

And now we know. Now we know J's allergies, even with medication, cannot withstand an indoor cat. Now we know we probably need to own a home with a yard before we consider another pet.  Now we know we value our morning snuggles over getting up and comforting a tiny thing that has been screaming for our attention all night (that one was especially eye-opening; I caught myself picking up my birth control pills two or three times all week to ensure I'd taken my daily dose). Now we know.

Couch-snuggles. She ALWAYS had to have her cheek against my cheek.

& she could never decide between us, so she hopped from me to J every few minutes.

Oh, Vera. We will miss you, but we are so thankful that you'll be happy in your new home. ♥ 

Mixtape Monday #3: Childhood

To say I've been slacking on my mixtapes would be an egregious understatement. I'm no good with commitments, so I don't know what was going on in my brain when I decided a weekly mixtape would be a phenomenal and simple task. Oops.

Today, I bring you the mixtape of my childhood.

These are my comfort songs. They're the songs that Mom danced to while she was cleaning our old apartment, the songs that Dad cranked up in the back yard when he was mixing paint for his new client's house, the songs that don't sound the same without the soft pop and crackle of a needle on a vinyl groove. They're the songs that can't be played loudly enough, and until the past three months, the songs that never made me cry.

What are songs that remind you of your childhood? What songs bring you comfort? What songs feel like home?

Good News!

My precious 15-year-old baby girl isn't on her way out -- she's actually healthy, aside from a pretty severe urinary tract infection! I broke down crying in the vet's office when they told me she was healthy -- I knew I had been stressed about it, but I didn't realize just how much until then. I've never snuggled her so close in my life. Now she's back home, she's eating again, she's using her litter box again, and she's not even holding a grudge against me for sticking a syringe of amoxicillin down her throat 2-3 times a day.

AND, in other good news, my cornbread turned out beautifully! I wish Granny were still here. She'd be so proud. I may or may not have put just a few too many chopped jalapenos in there, but luckily we like our cornbread spicy! 

Also, J's parents are flying in from California to close on their house, finally (they've been trying to sell their house here in Alabama ever since last April when they packed up and moved to Cali). I requested to leave a couple of hours early on Thursday so that we can go have dinner with them. It'll be great to see them again. I love them both so much -- every time I'm around his family, I boggle at how lucky we are. Not every couple is lucky enough to have an amazing support system on both sides. I love his family as much as I love my own, and he feels the same way towards mine. ♥

Hope all of you are having a lovely week.

A mishmash of topics.

Work. We've finished training the newbies for night shift. They both have previous call center experience and they catch on very quickly, which is great!

The best  part about work, though, is that my schedule may be changing soon. I talked to my supervisor about bumping me to a mid schedule (especially now since we're almost overly-stocked for night shift), which would entail 10-6 and 10-7 shifts. I'll be able to run errands before things close, to visit with Mom when she gets off work at 6pm, to actually free up my evenings now and again for friends and family... you know, if my request is approved. I feel confident that it will be; my supervisor has mentioned that there are some upcoming changes in the department. She also asked if I'd be willing to talk to her about attending an upcoming leadship/customer relations training course, and I told her yes. If they're thinking of bumping me up to customer relations, however, I'm asking for a raise. We'll see how that pans out.

***

Daisy. My nerves are shot. I am so wound up about taking Daisy (my sweet furbaby, a fifteen-year-old cat, who still lives with my Mom because of my poor husband's cat allergies) to the vet tomorrow. My father, a life-long dog person and disliker of cats, absolutely loved Daisy. She was the exception to his UGH-CATS rule, and she was his couch snuggle buddy. Ever since Dad died, her health (which wasn't the best in the first place -- I'm pretty sure she's going blind, because she has cataracts in both of her eyes) has declined rapidly. She's begun losing control of her bladder on her way to her litter box and she hasn't eaten a thing in nearly three days now.

The only time all week she has come out from hiding in her "spot" underneath a corner table beside the couch, Mom says, was yesterday when J & I were visiting Mom before I had to go to work. She came out to meet me when she heard my voice and I picked her up and cradled her, swaying her side-to-side like a baby. After a few minutes, I sat with her on the couch, next to J, where she snuggled between us and slept the entire time we were there.

I'm afraid that the vet will give us bad news. I want to be optimistic, I want to think something can be cured with an antibiotic or a shot, but I just don't know. It's so hard to think about letting her go, even harder now that Dad's gone, but if there's something wrong with her that can't be fixed, it's not fair of us to keep her around if she's in pain.

***

Home. Things have been going well at home, as always. I feel more and more like this new apartment (I keep saying new, but we've been here for three months) is our home, because I know we'll be here for the remainder of our time in this town. I've been in a crazy nesting mood, too.

I want to decorate and I've begun looking at furniture that we'll soon call ours (keep in mind we're not buying stuff just to buy it -- we actually need new furniture, and since everything here right now was ours individually before we knew each other, it's simply exciting to be making purchasing choices together for our stuff to replace my stuff -- isn't that gross? -- we're saps, sorry).

Also, as I type, I've just put a pan of Mexican cornbread in the oven. Here's the funny thing about that -- I don't cook. I've never cooked. Granny and Mom have been pillars in the community of feeding people here with their amazing food, yet I don't cook. I've never had an interest in it. Well, since I got off work a couple of hours before J tonight, he asked me to go ahead and make the cornbread for our supper according to my Granny's recipe (I have her old recipe boxes filled with her recipes -- I wanted them for her handwriting, not for my cooking prowess, but J has made good use of them for sure). Being the melodramatic kitchen-phobic that I am, I apologized to my poor Granny the whole time I was mixing up the cornbread, because I'm 110% sure that I've screwed it up somehow. BUT. What if it comes out and it's awesome (however unlikely that may be)? Mexican cornbread for everyone I know and love! Huzzah!

***

Family. You wanna know what's super? My little sister (she's 23) and her husband finally moved into their very first apartment today... after being married for five years and living with other people. I'm so elated for her! I haven't seen the place yet, but Mom followed them today and said that she thinks it'll work out well for them, since they finally found somewhere to take all of their animals (two snakes, one bearded dragon, two ferrets, one giant black derpy labrador, and a cat... I think) without an insane pet deposit. Finally, a place all their own. Now all my sister needs to do is get her driver license and she'll be good to go!

Mom is still having some pretty dark days lately. She misses Dad so much. Little things still set her off -- and that's normal, of course, after a death -- but as much as I know and accept the fact that she has to go through these stages to get to a better place, but I want to absorb every single ounce of her sadness and tuck it away to protect her from it.

***

Timer for the cornbread just went off. Cross your fingers for me, y'all. I'm going to go assess my damages, apologize again to my Granny if needed, eat supper, and snuggle the hubs when he finally gets home.