One of life’s little injustices…or is it?

So, as I’m preparing to move to Nebraska for my new job, I have been contemplating how much I will miss a lot of people that I know here in Bozeman and am once again reminded of people I have known and loved, but have left behind previously.  I’ve decided that it is one of life’s little injustices that we spend time with people and become close to them, only to have them move on and out of our lives or to move on ourselves.  The result is the same either way.  I think family is the biggest example of this: all that time spent fighting with and learning to love siblings during the growing up years only to finally realize that, when you cannot always be in such close proximity, that is precisely and perpetually what you want to do.  Too bad we can’t or don’t realize these things sooner…  It seems sad, and, yet, at the same time those seemingly never-ending family roadtrips and those times giggling on the floor until your sides ache are the experiences that solidify this bond.  Without these experiences, we cannot develop this type of relationship.  

Aside from family, however there are many people who pass through our lives at one time or another.  We live near some of them for years and some of them are only a part of our close association for days, weeks or months.  Whatever it is, I believe that people come into our lives for a reason.  I don’t believe that this is a coincidence (despite the fact that there are always those individuals whose purpose in our lives seems to be to help us learn patience or tolerance or those whose purpose we cannot discern until later).  However, as much as we try, we lose contact with at least some of these people that, at least for a time, meant a great deal to us.  Or, despite the fact that we remain in touch, we no longer share the exact same bond that we once had.  Sometimes even people who are still in close physical proximity drift out of our circle of close friends for one reason or another.  Perhaps these people have fulfulled their purpose for coming into our lives and now must move on to help someone else.  Or, perhaps one or both of us stop investing the time in the friendship that is required to keep it alive…  Someone once pointed this out to me–that being a friend is not a passive thing, you have to invest some time to truly be a friend.  This would also explain why an email every so often or an occasional post on facebook does not create the same type of bond as spending several hours a week together doing whatever, wherever.  Another possibility is that our friendship has been “trumped” (so-to-speak) by a deeper one such as when one of our best friends gets married and our relationship lessens even if ever so slightly as theirs grows.  As impossible as it would be in this life, wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of the people we ever knew and cared about could always be with us?  if our relationships could remain in their best state forever?  Why do we have to move on?  Why must our relationships evolve?  I don’t know, but, whatever the reason or circumstance, it is always sad to say farewell to those to whom you are close.  But, we all face those times in our lives.

Conversely, one of the neatest things about true friends is that they can always be just that.  Unless we intentionally chase these friendships from our hearts because of grief or spite or let them die for whatever reason, they remain intact as if scientifically preserved.  Then, when we meet again, it is as if we are picking up exactly where we left off, instantly and effortlessly resuming the closeness that we once felt.  True friends are the type that whenever you happen to see each other or talk to each other on the phone, it is as if you have never really been apart–aside from the catching up on details of what you’ve been up to and where you have been.  Something deeper bonds your souls together.  These true friends are the ones that drift through your thoughts often and of whom you have fond memories–the kind of memories that can make you laugh out loud or cry at seemingly (or really) inappropriate times when no one else around you knows why…

So despite the fact, that we cannot carry all of the people that we have ever known and cared about around with us wherever we go, these friendships stay in our hearts in a dormant stage as if flash-frozen.  But they can be immediately reconstituted whenever we meet again.  So despite the seemingly unfair nature of this whole phenomenon and the sadness that sometimes accompanies it, we are granted this gift to be able to store these relationships in our hearts indefinitely and enjoy them again and again, either through revisiting fond memories or by becoming reacquainted with those (in some cases) long lost friends once again.  How wonderful it will be when we will be able to have these good friends near us always–especially our families and those to whom we have no blood relation, but are close enough to be placed in the same category.

The hidden joys of having house cats…

So, growing up on our ranch in Montana, we always had at least one batch of kittens every summer…  I seemed to have had a gift for picking out the “special” ones (as in “Stop eating the paste!” special).  For instance one of my kittens named “Babes” (Don’t ask me why a 13 year old would come up with such a stupid name… IT seems incredibly ridiculous to me now, but that was her name.)  She was very “special.”  In fact, my brothers liked to hold her up in the air by her tail to make me mad.  The funny thing was, that she would START purring when picked up by the tail!  Anway, at this time in my life I could not understand why my Dad wouldn’t let us keep a cat in the house.  He would allow us to bring the kittens in for a while to play, but they lived outside.  I really wanted a house cat.  In fact, I told everyone that when I had my own house, I was going to have a house cat.  Around Thanksgiving, I decided that I was going to get a kitten, but I had to get two so that they would have someone to play with.  Well, I did–Fergus and Toby.  They were loads of fun; they would run all over the house and chase and tumble and they were so incredibly cute!  When they got a little older they would play with my toes while I was trying to sleep and run over the top of my bed constantly which kept me awake.  Fergus liked to crawl on top of my head and sleep, while Toby preferred to be under the covers by my feet…  They were so funny, despite the fact that they kept me awake sometimes!  I think this is the first reason Dad never let a cat live in our house–he tried it once because my Mom brought some home and the cats kept everyone awake with their nocturnal nonsense, so they got booted outside.

Another reason could be that they are reputed to be not so delicate with the furniture…  But, Toby and Fergus were pretty good about only scratching on their scratching post and they were angels as far as using the litter box from the get-go.  What a relief!  However, the utility of getting kittens in pairs was reinforced when Fergus passed on (he got FIP) and Toby nearly destroyed my house before I could find a new playmate for him.  Ok, so that’s a little melodramatic, but, out of boredom (I presume), he did destroy the miniblinds above my headboard in my bedroom with his little chompers–bless his heart…  (I’m told that in the South you can say anything you want about someone as long as you add those three words!)  Anyway, he hasn’t touched them since I got Jasper cat.  (Don’t ask me about the obviously needless redundancy of calling a cat his name followed by the word “cat”…, but it rolls off the tongue nicely.  So nicely in fact that I occasionally refer to his partner in crime as “Toby cat.”)  Anyway, Toby was so glad to have a new friend that, while Jasper cat was trying to figure out which end was up and where the food and potty were, Toby kept pummelling him and biting his ears.  Poor little guy!  He survived it well and they are best buds now.  As far as house destruction, we could always include the fur that gets on stuff, but my cats don’t shet too awfully much–especially if I use the Furminator every so often.  I know it sounds like a torture device, but it is really just a special comb that works like a charm to comb out their loose undercoat hair and keep them from depositing it on the couch…or my bed or my clothes…or whatever else.

So all is peachy with the cats in the house, right?  Wrong!  Jasper cat and Tobes decided that they liked going outside, so I thought that that would be fine and purchased a cat door and some tags for the kitties.  They were in heaven!  They could run around and explore new things–even if they couldn’t get out of my chain link fenced back yard for the first month or so…  The real joy began about a month ago when my cats decided to capitalize on their hunting skills and instincts.  That IS what cats are supposed to do, (I know and believe me I appreciate it) but cats have this devilish delight in bringing their captured prey home with them…!  So, at first it was the earthworms… Toby loves earthworms.  I would grab them and chuck them out the front door and he would zip out the back door, get a new one and be back in before I had hardly shut the front door!  Next it was the mice…  It was an especial treat to come home at night only to find a dead mouse when I flipped on the light.  At least they were dead.  Last week, I came home around ten and turned on my bedroom light only to discover that my entire room was covered in feathers!  The source which, a dead starling, lay on the floor near the door.  It was so digusting, but again, I thought to myself, at least it was dead.  Famous last words of a fool!  Two nights later, I was asleep and I could hear one of the cats playing with something between my bed and the wall.  (Since my cats gave up playing with their toy mice a couple of months ago, this type of noise is NEVER a good thing.)  I looked at the clock and it was 1:03 AM.  I got up and turned on the bathroom light and suddently I could hear this awful screeching.  Toby had a bird and it was most definitely NOT dead.  The only thing worse than the fact that is was alive was that it was in my BEDROOM!  Toby would drop the bird and then when it thought it could escape, it would try to fly and Toby would snatch it mid-lauch and shake it around some more with his teeth, scattering feather everywhere.  I chased Tobes out of my room because he was definitely not willing to let me steal his prize, nor did I really want to touch it.  I chased him to the living room where Jasper cat steals the bird and streaks through the kitchen back down the hall back toward my bedroom!  When he discovered I was in hot pursuit and that he might be cornered, he released the bird and it flew right at me and up over my head shedding feathers with every flap of its little wings.  Jasper leaped into the air and swiped the bird again and I managed to chase him out the back door and lock the cat door so the cats could not come back inside with their little dinner and a show act.  By this time I was furious…  If the keeping me awake with their night games and the house destruction issues were not enough to convince me that perhaps my Dad had been wise in excluding the cats from our living space, the bird incident was a good clean-up hitter!  I keep hoping this phase will pass because I’m not sure how many more of these types of events I can handle before the cats are banished from the house permanently!  Perhaps it is good practice for the when I have kids one day…  Only time will tell.

Gotta love celebrity politics…

So, this morning I was reading the news on Yahoo!  (The current status of the presidential election is dismal to me.  I find it depressing that I am going to have to vote for the candidate that I dislike the least…  Or not vote, but that’s hardly an option in my opinion!  You shouldn’t complain about what goes on if you didn’t cast your vote…)  But, that is just a sidenote–what floored me this morning on the news was the rationale some people on the BET awards were using to support Barack Obama.  If it were only on this show, then it would not matter in the least, but I think there is a lot of this among the populus.  Now, I’ll try and put personal views aside, but voting a black president in just because he would be the first black president seems like the stupidest thing a body could do!  The same goes for a woman president.  I don’t have a problem with a black president or even a woman president, but it seems that we should base our political decisions on more than just setting precedence!  Obviously if the black person or the woman is the most qualified and represents my views the best, by all means I would not hesitate to vote for them!  I would have voted for Colin Powell in a heartbeat!  However, it seems juvenile to me to vote for someone simply because it would be cool to have a woman or a black person in the oval office.  Besides, why do movie stars and entertainers have so much clout?  What are their credentials for publicly saying who should be elected?  Freedom of speech, I know…they can say whatever they want!  Then, I guess the real question is why aren’t more of the citizens asking the afore-mentioned questions before falling in line behind these highly visible figures?  At any rate, I hope that people are really ignoring the color of skin or gender in making their decisions in politics (and in any other area for that matter!).  That is what equality is supposed to be about…  BUT then again, what gives me the clout to rant about this anyway?!?!