Adulting – Page 11 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Thankful

This has been a whirlwind years, with plenty of ups and downs to keep things interesting. I am grateful that the ups far outweigh the downs. Here are some of the things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:

The Oregonian Cookbook my grandmother sent me a few years ago. It renewed my interest in poached eggs – I ate an egg poached in homemade broccoli tomato soup this morning – and filled my house with the wonderful scent of cranberry streusel to take to our Thanksgiving meal. (And amused that spellcheck thinks I should replace “streusel” with “stressful”.)
Diane looking up at Arwen without hissing or growling.

I’m delighted by the kitten we adopted earlier this week, it’s probably not what my parents expected me to spend my holiday money on…
and relieved that Arwen’s introduction into the house has been mostly painless. Well, at least among the cats… I have scratches that prove there’s a kitten in the house.
I am immensely grateful for coffee, since kittens don’t seem to sleep through the entire night.
The lovely sounds of Peter Hollens’s Christmas album that I listened to while cooking, and that Cassandra (mostly) has good taste in music.
That I have friends and family who appreciate my sense of humor, which explains why I included a note about Dobby when I mailed a sock back to a friend.

I hope everybody had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

The Little Things

It doesn’t happen often, but I ran out of spoons today. After arriving home, I realized that my energy levels were too low and my aches from the accident were too many to go back out, and I rescheduled my dentist appointment. It’s not a huge deal, they were accommodating about it, it’s just not something I would usually do.

I’ve spent a lot of the last week and a half, since the accident, thinking about little things, some good, some bad… the fact that my blog just deleted the whole list is on the bad side.

I have amazing friends, family, and co-workers who have been entirely supportive throughout this accident mess.
My work laptop, which was in my trunk, survived the accident, even though my trunk did not.
Lego C3-PO, on my keychain, lost a leg. This is amazingly appropriate. (Lego Darth Maul survived intact.)
My new car is unquestionably the perfect color for me…
and is sadly lacking in bumper stickers. I hope to remedy this soon.
Every time I look at the accident photos, I’m amazed that I walked away.
At the same time, I’m bummed that I missed my first opportunity at a black belt test. I did watch it, and I would have tested with an incredible group of candidates.
As I was loading the washing machine this evening, I looked out the window and noticed that my maple tree is now convinced that it’s fall.

I miss karate. Switching from up to 5 times a week to 0 is hard. I want my elbow and shoulder to heal quickly, so I can get back on the mat.
I’m impressed with how efficiently my insurance company has handled their side of things.
Did I mention my amazing friends? Yes? Well, they’re worth mentioning again.

A sudden change of plans

I was supposed to test for my first degree black belt tonight. Was. Unfortunately, a driver who was supposed to be paying attention to the road, and presumably wasn’t, rear-ended me on Tuesday, leaving me in a rental car and with a mild concussion. Per doctor’s orders, I’ve missed a couple days of work and have to avoid extreme physical activities and contact sports for at least a week. A black belt test certainly qualifies as both.

But enough whining, there will be another opportunity in the spring to test for my black belt. I was lucky to walk away from the accident. And my Camry, Roheryn, has been all about luck, from the moment I won him at a Cubs game in 2012.

My Camry, Roheryn, on his first and last days with me. — Roheryn, on his first and last days.

I entered a sweepstakes through the local Toyota dealership, winning a pair of tickets to a Cubs game and a spot as a finalist to win a Toyota Camry. On the day of the game, one of the finalists didn’t show up, bring my changes of winning to 1 in 5. We were each given a baseball with a number on it, and most of us had the player who was drawing the winning ball sign that one. Then he reached into a bag and picked one of the five balls in there; the number matched mine and happened to be his jersey number.

We took this car on our big road trip in 2013, visiting national monuments and parks on an eleven day drive. I drove this car to each of the out-of-state regional karate tournaments we’ve gone to, and loaded unseemly amounts of cargo from trips to Menard’s and other stores into the trunk and back seat.

Apparently the good luck was mine. Everything that’s supposed to happen in a car accident to protect the people inside did – the back window shattered appropriately, two airbags went off (did you know there’s a foot airbag?), and the back and front crumpled up rather than letting the other vehicles injure me.

I hope my next car is lucky too. Preferably without an accident.

Exploring new possibilities

I usually peer in the window, then wander off. It’s safer that way. But I was spotted and invited in, so I took a chance.

It feels like speed dating – is that still a thing? – where you rush in and meet everybody with at most a couple minutes to grasp each personality before moving onto the next. It’s not as structured, it just seems pointless to backtrack if your first impression is that you won’t click. Or that the rest of the household won’t click.

June and Diane — We’re either sleeping or in motion; we will not look at the camera for you.

My girls have fairly aggressive personalities. They’re not outright hostile, simply a handful, and I won’t subject a timid personality to that. I’m also not sure how they’d react if I brought someone new home. We walked out of PetSmart without adopting another cat.

It’s been over two years since we lost our third cat, Mungojerrie, at the ripe old age of 19. Well, our first cat really, since he was the oldest. I adopted him at 10 weeks old, along with his brother, Rumpelteazer. (Yes, they lived up to their names.) We had lost Rumpel to cancer eight years before. At the time, we had a third cat, Missy, who almost became friends with Mungo before she passed away. When we lost her, he was lonely, howling for attention in the middle of the night until we (quickly) conceded and adopted Diane, our beautiful black and white cat.

A few months later, we had a brief, and tragic, interlude with Marianna, a cat who gave the most wonderful hugs, but didn’t absorb salt properly into her system. This caused her to pursue odd food sources, including climbing into a garbage can for some French fries that had been thrown out. She was a strange one.

After losing her, we adopted June, our polydactyl tortoise shell (she’s a Hemingway cat… an extra toe on each front paw). She was a young mother, being adopted out at the same time as her “kittens” (they were as large as her already, and she’s not particularly small), and she rounded out the family perfectly.

This was the first time since we Mungo passed away that I’ve stepped into the room to meet the adoptable cats. I’m not sure we need a third cat, or that we’re ready for one, but there was a cute Siamese I wanted to meet. As it turns out, he was sweet, but too shy for this house. Maybe next time.

Reality Doses

The trip of a lifetime was surrounded by heavy doses of reality.

Eighteen months ago, my mother called me on my birthday and asked if Cassandra and I wanted to cruise the Galápagos with her. It was such a tough sell, we probably deliberated for all of five minutes.

Planning ensued… should we go with the known company, that Mom had cruised with before, or look into others? Book through her travel agency or directly through the cruise line? We opted out of any pre- or post- extensions due to my limited vacation time.

There were hiccups. We booked over a year ahead, which meant we couldn’t buy plane tickets at the same time. My mother wanted to arrive a day earlier than us, which meant booking an extra hotel night. The travel agent retired, leaving someone else at the agency scrambling to find us airfare as the trip approached. My mother, who’s fairly close to technologically illiterate, would leave me a voicemail with another question for the travel agent, then drop off the grid for a few days or a month on another trip. Then suddenly the school year was almost over and I was rushing to buy whatever Cassandra had outgrown from the packing list, and checking to see what I was missing.

The day before our trip arrived and we were just about packed and ready to go. I woke up and prepared for work like normal, then took a few minutes to water the vegetable garden. As I walked back in, I pulled a few weeds out (it’s a compulsive habit), so I stopped to wash my hands at the kitchen sink before preparing breakfast.

Nothing came out.

I stepped into the garage and could hear some water running, presumably the last trickles the pump had pulled from my well before the corroded pipe (many feet down) had burst. By the end of the day, I had new pipes and a new pump going to my well. Reality doses - corroded pipe and dirty, leaking tubing

The trip of a lifetime deserves its own post; that will follow soon. Having returned from an outstanding ten-day trip, I returned to work the next day and Cassandra wandered off to her Dad’s for a week of relaxation.

Friday morning, I stepped into the garage – which is rapidly becoming a sign of bad news – and noticed water dripping from a tube into a drain. It was small, but I was sure it hadn’t been dripping like that before.

As it turns out, fixing my well resulted in increased water pressure; the corroded pipe must have been leaking for some time, but not so much that the pressure had seemed low when I bought the house. Increased water pressure caused a minuscule hole to expand. By Saturday afternoon, it became apparent that plumbing Band-Aids were not going to cut it; the tubing was split right at the joint. I alternated between full pressure with the drain filling up, and turning the pump off while I used up the wall tank of water for the duration of the weekend. I was positively ecstatic on Monday when the plumber announced it was an easy fix.

And that’s how reality reared its ugly head on both sides of my vacation.