This year, as Mother's Day approached, the hovering weight above my chest fell. Part of me feels like this is a regression, a depression that has reemerged after I worked so hard to build myself back up after Mom died. This year, I looked in the mirror one morning and it struck me: my mother is dead. I can never be a mother. This day will never mean anything at all to me; a bitterness and a deep hurt has surrounded me since. You can only pretend to be okay with everything for so long.

My memories blur and then grow agonizingly clear. I made myself "forget" two years ago. It seemed easier then, when the hurt was so recent, so real, and I wasn't sure if I could survive without her. I suppose it is time to actually deal with this emptiness. This all comes at a moment when my brother has fallen to depression, sending a late night text message wondering if I still had the slide show we played during her visitation, and my father has signed up for a fresh round with grief counseling.

This year, instead of being a party pooper, I elected to stay home from all Mother's Day festivities. My brother did the same...we are in the same boat of past and future reasons to celebrate—he tells me he never wants to be in any relationship at all because it hurts too much when people die. At the risk of sounding immature and whiny, this isn't fair.

Normally I have my wits about me, my rhetoric down. "There's a bigger plan; we're too small to see." I'll recite something she once relayed to me..."The word 'deserve' should not have been invented. Who are we to decide?" But right now, it all all just seems so unfair.

Thursday afternoon, I decided that I needed to run away, even if only for a day. Nick helped me plan a quick trip to Chicago, and we spent yesterday exploring the city and catching Wicked at the Ford theatre.
Today, reality returns. I think Nick was quite surprised when, on the trip home, he asked if I wanted to stop and visit her grave today. I clamped my lips and shook my head; gigantic alligator tears leaked from beneath my sunglasses.

Last year, I decided that I have come to save up all of my mourning for Mother's Day and her birthday, the two days that have always been about her. This year, I am not quite sure that just two days will be enough. I have been able to talk about her fondly, in humor and warmth…trying to relay just how awesome of a person she was. Lately, I have been unable to say anything. I am overcome with images. I see her pregnant, rubbing her belly and talking to me like she told me she did. I remember us cuddled in bed together, talking and giggling. I feel her hugging me.

And then I feel it all go away.

Sophie went in for her follow up appointment on Saturday morning. Her bladder wasn't full enough for the urinalysis when we arrived, so they pumped fluids into her and held her for a few hours. The vet walked up to us saying, "Good news, bad news…" She had no crystals in her urine—amazing after having too many to count (excess of 100) in the small sample they viewed a month ago. The prescription food has done its work...even though she hates it.

(But, as Nick points out...she eats it. She eats everything. She just keeps eating and eating...)

Bad news, the new urine sample was riddled with bacteria. We have to pill her with an antibiotic twice a day for two weeks and then go back for another follow up. She no longer has to take solely Prescription Diet S/D; instead, she has to take Prescription Diet C/D. But now she can have Pounce again. Still no pretzels.



I had been holding her stock of Fancy Feast Marinated Morsels hoping that one day we would get the green light to give them to her again. I asked the question point-blank on Saturday, and that one day will never come. Not worth the risk. That afternoon, I emptied her place in the cupboard, moving the cans to a paper bag to take to her cousins' house. She was so excited to see me in that cupboard, fingering those cans. Nearly dancing with excitement, she stood on her back paws and braced herself on my leg. STUPID PH!

I still hate Econ. I hated both Micro- and Macroeconomics when I took them in the past, and nothing has changed in the last six years. Curses to those credits for not transferring! I am just starting the third week in this accelerated course, and already I am coaching myself toward the June 22nd finish date. Fortunately, I have class in a subject that I enjoy as well (marketing), but even that made me a little bugeyed last night as I had to teach myself my marketing professor's personal version of APA format before submitting a paper.

This economics professor is a real hard aaa—erm...she's tough. I cannot figure out how to impress her pants off. I started the session thinking I may just enjoy Economics more than Marketing because my Marketing professor began her reign telling us to forget everything we know about APA format and learn her way (going onto post no less than 10 documents to study). But I've figured out how to impress her pants off. We're all good. Econ still sucks.

Maybe it's just exhaustion. Maybe it's being stuck with my nose in the books while the weather warms. Maybe it's like I think and economics really is the devil. In any even, June 22nd can't come soon enough. (Just in time to start the next block of classes June 23rd.) This is the most absurd thing I've ever decided to do.

I have confessed my Jane Austen addiction before. I sit wrapped in a bouclé throw and under a purring Sophie watching the A&E series. As time passes, I wonder that I know every line of this five-hour film. What keeps me coming back to a story that I know so well? Is it personal joy, or is it the joy that remember in sharing it with someone? A worthy question, and one that I am unable to answer.

I have just now reached the conclusion of the first DVD, the moment when audible breaths catch, and Mr. Darcy confesses his love for Elizabeth. "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." No wonder I spent a decent portion of my adolescence in love with Collin Firth, huh? But instead of losing myself in the conflict and the rawness tonight, I lose myself in memories. Mom bought the six-part VHS copy when it came out in the 90's. That tidbit probably tells you little knowing that the two-part DVD is $20…but that VHS set was nearly $150.

We would take a week every year, watching one tape a night until we were through. Days four and five were the best, when the original conflicts lessen and Mr. Darcy puts Caroline Bingley in her place. FINALLY. Hate that woman!—in every medium I've seen/read her presented! Yet, I find my emotional involvement with tonight's viewing detached.

Boredom does not seem to be a factor. Is it melancholy? Stronger emotions trumping silly fantasies? Is it a jaded outlook that makes this story unbelievable? Is it a calm contentedness in my own life that makes romanticizing this story unnecessary? I think it's likely fatigue, knowing we are faced with choices regularly—hard choices—and they may or may not lead to happy ends. I do not care to think of them.

This all seems very inane, doesn't it? Welcome to the Blogosphere. It's just that I find it curious that I no longer lose myself in stories. My energy, heart, and time is better invested in my own life anyway…but I feel as though I have lost part of my identity.

I grudgingly watch South Park with Nick every now and then. Mostly, I find the show distasteful, but I would be remiss if I did not find it in equal parts funny.

I am not proud.

Last night, I was particularly amused when the townspeople of South Park awoke to no Internet. Widespread panic ensues as people cannot find out what happened to the internet because there is no internet to check! An awkward moment of silence encompasses the crowd as someone asks how they got their news before the Internet. As memory dawns, the throng breaks into a television store to turn on the news. The newscaster reports dully that their Internet is down and they have no way to get the news to report. In a deep resolve and in Grapes of Wrath style, one family decides to head out to California where it is rumored that there is still some Internet out there.

I found the satire hilarious. To equate the loss of the Internet with the Great Depression was brilliant, so sad and true. In the end, one of the little boys is sent to negotiate with The Internet (a giant router with a blinking orange light), and he makes peace with it by unplugging it, then plugging it back in. Peace (and the World Wide Web) returns to South Park, and a town meeting is held wherein the people are cautioned not to abuse web browsing, to only surf when absolutely necessary, and to view Internet pornography twice a day maximum.

And, with that distasteful note, I have dedicated an entire entry to South Park. Nick has poisoned my mind.

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(edited to add clip:)

I had my yearly eye exam on Thursday. My optometrist monitors my hazel-y eye because she says that we should monitor anything on our bodies that change. Good news to report: I still don't have a disease! The coloration is not raised and there is no presence of a tumor behind my eye. She says the hazel pigmentation cells in my right eye are the ones that I would have been given when I was created in my mother's womb—and there is absolutely no presence of hazel in the other eye. Not even tiny cells that'll be more apparent later on. Though, she did see noticeable advancement of the hazel from last year. Whereas her notes described last year's presence as a "quadrant", she says it is definitely fingering out. So, I guess we keep watching that sneaky booger and celebrate that I have another clean bill of health—those get more valuable after receiving several that are still pretty dirty. I am happy. I am just in a conundrum. I "dress" my eyes to bring out the blue...if I become all-hazel over there, do I need different palettes for each eye? Coppers for the blue and plums for the hazel? I find this all very distressing.

After dinner conversation last night, my curiosity grew as to how I spent my money last year. Holding my breath, I downloaded the report and opened the local file this morning. Three things:

1. Sophie leads a royal lifestyle.
2. I am so happy that every Walgreen's visit is classified as "HEALTHCARE"—lord only knows what the absence of yet another eye color compact would do to my delicate state.
3. I've spent more on gas than on either Sophie or "HEALTHCARE"…which I can say, without embarrassing myself on either of the previous totals, is quite a lot.

I am actually very impressed by the completeness and organization of my bank's spending report. The only problem is they don't know how to classify checks—not that I write many. Goals for this year? Learn to teleport.

Sophie went back to the vet on Tuesday; her father took her. I was concerned about her long stretches of sneezing and a weeping eye that I first noticed Saturday. Sunday night, she went potty—first #1, then #2—in my closet. Monday morning, I called the vet to see if my fears were unfounded: nope, they wanted to see her.

Her eyes looked good (I keep thinking of her sister whose eye infection caused them to remove her eye when she was a kitten...so weird eye stuff with Soph freaks me out) and her sneezing has stopped. BUT, it just isn't normal for cats to do their business just anywhere. Instinctively, cats look for soil or sand-like material to eliminate…shag carpeting does not so much meet the prompt.



So they did a urinalysis and found crystals. Feline cystitis has ruined our little kitty's life. I gave the unopened bag of cat food that I had to a friend at work. (When I handed over the Iams Naturals she exclaimed, "My cats have never eaten so good!" and somewhere Sophie was weeping at her lost lifestyle…) I want to have a vet tell it to my face before I give away her precious Fancy Feast—she will be on low pH food the rest of her life. Dr. Larsen told us that her infection is very rare in a female feline.

She is on Hill's Prescription Diet s/d for at least the next 1-3 months (at which point we would be able to switch to the over-the-counter version), but possibly forever. As I rearrange my budget to accept that I can probably live off on an English muffin a day, I am planning to call PetSmart (where I get an über low price) to see if Sophie's clinic needs to fax over her prescription for a refill, or if I can walk in there with the copy they gave Nick on Tuesday. I will also call the vet today to see what I can give her for treats since she is used to getting them in the morning (it's the only reason she gets me up at the most ungodly hours, but I enjoy her enthusiasm), and OTC treats are a no-go.

We read over her diagnosis and her new diet, Sophie sitting on the counter-stool next to Nick. He looked at her with sad eyes and said, "You know what this means, don't you? No more potato chips." And I swear, if she was any kind of a teenager she would have ran upstairs and slammed the door while screaming, "I HATE MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!"

A Life Gone By:

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They found roundworm in our cat's poop.

Being that she has no outside exposure and that she can't get five-inch worms in her intestines from sniffing air, I would say that she has had these suckers the entire time we've had her (I refuse to believe we have mice that she could have gotten them from). When I asked if this was possible considering that last year's sample yielded no parasites, they replied that they only test a portion of the sample and that some worms are discriminatory-layers. In essence, it's likely that they missed her nasty worminess.

They gave her the first deworming treatment and sent a second home to be administered in two weeks. I am so completely grossed out. They have me on the lookout for squirming poo, and I am wigging out. So seriously. Nick and I threw out all of her current litter. The instructions I found were to first scrub it out with bleach because bleach is toxic to ringworm larvae, and then the scrub away the bleach because bleach is toxic to cats. Then we scrubbed her bathroom. My eyebrows physically itch. Why my eyebrows? Good question. I feel like the psychologist from Miracle on 34^th Street.

I don't remember feeling quite this disturbed since we had to read How to Eat Fried Worms in fourth grade. Some describe the Antichrist as a horned demon with flaming nostrils—in my mind, he's slimy and squirmy, and he should be fed to baby birds. I will spend the next weeks trying to overcome my revulsion and work up the courage to so much as touch my cat.

Madison, Wisconsin tops the national best teeth list.

Look, I know it's no secret that I more than just a little obsessive about certain things. I grew up with my role model being someone who regularly marched to her car with a Q-tip, rubbing alcohol, and sheer determination and disinfect those dashboard crannies. I am not quite that way, much to Nick's chagrin ("I thought when I started dating someone with OCD, the condo would always be spotless!"), but I have instead the compulsion to randomly wash my face, scrub my hands, and brush my teeth. Don't worry, Nick. When you started dating someone with OCD, your significant other would always be clean!

I get picked on a lot for my obsession—but today I did manage to have a rather riveting conversation in the bathroom which I did not initiate, thank you very much. I had this conversation with the very acquaintance who stumbled upon me brushing my teeth one day and sneered, "Let me guess. You ate something and now you think your teeth are scummy." A former cube neighbor, I know she sees me as competition: it is arguable whose collection of Purell is greater. She has a very sensitive nose and can often be found walking through our team asking who stinks. I always hold up my hands for vindication and she replies, "Oh, you smell like a hospital. Yuuummmy, clean hospital." Curiously, I have no qualms with double-dippers or sharing toothbrushes (except with cats) and I am fond of eating with my hands.

The moral of the story? Madison's got it right, and I'm still messed up. YAY!