in which I remodel my house, herd many cats, ride a motorcycle, teach fitness classes, and become a stepmonster

We have much catching up to do, my few but intrepid followers! 

I don't exactly remember coming to a decision like "meh, screw that blog" or anything like that, I think it's more accurate to say that I just neglected and abandoned it due to the high quantity and velocity of other things being flung in the direction of my brain, and it got left out in the cold to shrivel and die.  But, HOORAY FOR THE INTERNETS!  Where all things stay alive unless someone removes their pages/links/trackbacks.  So it was here -forlorn and cobwebby, to be sure, but still alive- when I rediscovered it and decided to dust it off and try to revive it.  I think FaceBook also exploding in popularity (and yes, me getting sucked into it) may have had something to do with it.  I thought, "hey, great, another online outlet where i can express my thoughts and feelings to people who want to hear them..." FAIL.  That is NOT what FB is for, IMHO.  There's a growing number of people who are dropping off of it now, or just not checking in for many valid reasons, as eloquently described in my bloggy friend CPU's post here.

So now that we've established that I'm back for reals, and that THIS is the appropriate outlet for my thoughts, let's catch up on the gossip, shall we?!  Ahh, where to begin?

Well, remember that house we bought almost four years ago, that was under almost-constant construction?  Yup, you guessed it.  Still under almost-constant construction.  *sigh*.  I am amazingly consistent about some things - mainly (and ironically) my need for change and improvement of my surroundings, as if by osmosis it might improve ME as well.  [I am a Libra, actually, so this might just be true.]  My Other Half (remember OH?  He's still here, which is also a miracle for many reasons...) still hates the whole of nature with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.  Because everywhere 'nature' is (and by 'nature', I mean trees, rocks, grass, dirt, weeds, and other things that need maintenance), motorcycles aren't.  Therefore, all his hatey-ness.  

Nature = bad.
Motorcycle = good.

That about sums up the OH and his thinking.  But more on that later.  LOTS more, I'm sure...


In other news, I still do professionally the same thing I used to do (which is demonstrate software and try to convince potential customers to buy it), but for a MUCH bigger, better company. Yaaay, me!  Their recruiter actually tracked me down and had to romance me over to the 'dark side': the bigger company had been EATING MY LUNCH on the daily when it came to market share, and I was sick of it.  SICK OF IT, I say.  So they were the 'bad guys'.  Which the recruiter brilliantly countered with, "well, JC, if you're part of their team, they're no longer the enemy...riiiight?", spoken in the voice you use when reasoning with a small child who will not let go of that nasty lollipop they dropped in the sand.  Long story short, I surrendered the nasty lollipop despite all of the good memories I had associated with it, and it has been replaced by one of those comically huge, Willy-Wonka-dream-inducing multi-colored suckers the size of my head.  I'm SO glad I made that leap.  I'm in a much better place because of it.  And now we all know how easily bribed I can be with candy, or even just a candy metaphor.

CAT UPDATE SECTION 

I believe at my last posting we still had our original set of cats that we moved from Miami:  Roscoe P. Cattrain, Romeow, Frijol, and Boo-Boo. Well, that's changed too.

First, we lost Roscoe, literally.  He just went out one day (oh yeah, they all staged a coup and decided they were indoor/outdoor cats.  We really had no say in the matter.) and didn't come back.  He was almost 18 at the time, and as my blog archive documents, was starting to have health problems, and much like elderly humans, was getting increasingly cantankerous.  Cat lovers know that given the option, sick or elderly cats will run away and hide from their owners rather than die right there in the middle of everything.  I fully believe it was Roscoe's time and he knew it, and being the noble critter he was, wanted to spare his mama all of the drama (that rhyme was totally unintended, and a little cringe-worthy, given the context.  I'm aware.), so he went and died in private.  A neighbor recovered what we believe to be his mortal remains, so we believe him to be at rest, over the rainbow bridge, surely biting people in the afterlife as he did so often here.  We miss him.

There is a colony of feral cats in my neighborhood (which I have taken charge of, since nobody else stepped up) that was reproducing like, well, wild animals.  Shortly after Halloween a few years ago, I heard a squeak come out of the copse of trees in my front yard (which we have nicknamed "Vietnam", by the way), and upon searching for source of squeaking, found 3 adorable little kittens.  A tortie (who was adopted by a nice lady at my vet's office), a tabby (Conan), and an orange tabby (Punkin).  Conan and Punkin brought our tally up to 5 cats, which, in a big house with a cat door and a big yard, is a perfectly reasonable number.  Kind of.


It gets worse.


A little over a year ago, some of the ferals that escaped my traps (part of a trap-spay/neuter-release program) squirted out four more kittens.  There were already about 11 cats in the feral colony, and I really didn't want to add to it.  So I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to capture and domesticate those wild kittens, with the intent of re-homing them.  So I did.  Sort of.  I successfully trapped and domesticated them (with a LOT of time, help, and chicken-flavored baby food).  Rehoming?  Notsomuch.  I still have 2 of them, JP (Jazz Paws and his brother Mel), but found good homes with our friends for Mel's twin, Tater (who is now named Lucky - insert your own joke here-), and the runt, a black and white Tuxedo female we called "Scooter".

As we were domesticating those 4 feral kittens, a neighbor's kid brought me 3 more squealing kittens he had caught that needed a home and looked to be a little younger than my wild kittens.  My inside voice said, "Dammit, kid, I'm not the effing SPCA!" while my outside voice apparently said, "Sure, just put them right over there with the others."  Dangit.  

Enter Sunny, Vader, and Daisy. [I did not name these cats...I blame their names squarely on another critter recently brought into our shelter, story on that later!]  Sunny, who had the best disposition of all, was put up for adoption at our local no-kill Humane Society, amongst MANY MANY tears on my part.  Vader unfortunately fell ill and had a rapid decline over this past Christmas, and disappeared to cross the rainbow bridge.  We miss him.  Only Daisy remains with us from that litter.


For those keeping count, that brings us up to 8.


The feral kittens and the stray kittens were sequestered in our guest room for a few months (don't worry, they had tons of toys, lots of love, and daily visits lasting many hours, mainly due to the amount of cleaning that needed to be done in a room housing 7 kittens!) while we worked on domesticating them, getting them used to human contact, and taking turns getting each one to the vet and tested for diseases prior to allowing them contact with my original herd (now known as the "East Side OG's").  Once we had found adoptive homes for as many of them as possible, we relegated ourselves to taking ownership of what we had domesticated (them's the rules!), and realized we needed to integrate the new kids (West Siiiiiyyyyyyde!!!!) with the old kids (East Side OG, yo.).  This went about as well as you could expect an integration of two separate gangs to go, with a lot of caterwauling, posing, scratching, and spraying.  The cats didn't behave too well either, heh heh.  But seriously, I was traveling quite heavily with my job, so I wasn't able to do a slower approach to integrating the two communities, which to this day, a year later, I regret.  The reason I have so much regret over it is that Conan, who had been named for his boldness as a kitten, got bullied and apparently couldn't take it.  He started staying outside for longer and longer periods of time since West Side was throwing gang signs at him left and right.  Just like people, each cat deals with conflict differently.  Some people dig in and stay in the face of opposition, others just flee.  Poor little Conan fled.  He and Punkin had been our resident "bedcats", always looking for a cuddle with a warm hooman.  We had fed both of them with an eyedropper as kittens and formed what we thought was an unbreakable bond.  Unfortunately, Conan just couldn't hang, so he stayed away.  I would hunt him down when I wasn't traveling, bring him in the house into a "saferoom" with no other kitties, love on him and feed him and take naps with him, but over time he started reacting badly to this, and was growling and hissing at me, behavior I had never seen from him before.  Around this time, I asked my neighbor if he'd seen him and he informed me that they had been letting him into their house at night occasionally and that his new wife LOVED this little kitty, who got along swimmingly with their cat Sam!  I was simultaneously heartbroken and relieved.  I thanked them, apologized that once again my cat overflow was affecting them, and basically relinquished any dreams that I'd ever get my Conan back.  

So that's a hella-long explanation as to how and why we now have 7 cats.  Which, when you consider that at one time we had 13 or so living under our roof, is not a bad number to be 'down' to.  Honestly, it's not ideal.  We still have gang issues.  JP is the dominant male from West Side.  Romeow is dominant male from the East Side OG's.  Anytime the two 'kings' vie for the same position of power on our bed, it gets ugly.  Poor Punkin gets bullied by all of the West Side gang, but is too much of a Daddy's boy to run away like his brother.  So he just hisses and spits and growls and protects his territory as best as a little stripey orange dude can.  So yeah, we still have fighting and spraying and all kinds of kitty fun to deal with on a daily basis.  

CAT UPDATE SECTION OVER


Boy, that was a saga.


OTHER EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS

When I wasn't busy trapping/herding/domesticating/wrangling cats, I managed to find some time to learn how to ride a motorcycle!  I know, I was surprised too.  The OH had gotten pretty heavily into a local bike club that seemed pretty nice and I kept getting pressured to participate.  My options consisted of: get on the back of the OH's motorcycle and just pray a lot (not a good option for an atheist), or show up in my car and have to fight for parking.  One of the members offered to teach a bunch of us spousal members how to ride, and whaddaya know, I took to it!  I loved it immediately.  That's not to say that it doesn't scare the #(&% out of me on the regular, but honestly, if it doesn't scare you, you're doing it wrong.  So yeah, I'm a biker chick now too.

 
While trying to deal with all my motorycle-riding-cat-herding-traveling-house-construction-doing stress, I started going to the local gym.  Sporadically, at best.  But I discovered one thing I loved:  Zumba (I think I'm supposed to put a Trademark symbol or somesuch, I'll figure that out later) fitness!  I started slowly, going one or two times a week, since I could barely make it through that class as it was.  Eventually I got more serious and started going more often.  At some point, I became such a regular that people started telling me I should become an instructor!  So I did.  (I blame that on another Libra quality, we're easily suggestible.)  When I had enough time in my schedule, I was going about 6 times a week!  It really helped me get into shape but also helped me meet my current social circle of girlfriends, who keep me sane.  So yeah, I'm a Zumba and Zumba Toning instructor.  Add that to the resume under "Biker", "Cat Herder", or any of the other crazy titles I now hold.  Although mostly I just sub, I travel too much to have my own class.  I drop into my friends' classes and they are kind enough to let me lead a song or two.  It's major fun, I'm glad I discovered it and made it a part of my life.




ONE LAST MAJOR CHANGE

And when I say "major", I cannot emphasize (mainly because my font sizes max out at THIS BIG) enough exactly how major this is/was.  My OH has two children.  I don't mention them a lot, since if I were a child, I wouldn't want my life to be unknowingly documented by some weirdo on the interweb talking shit about me, so I try to give them the same consideration.  (I say "try" because it kind of shows that I have good intent here, even though I'm about to fail miserably.)  For reasons that are best left private, about the time I was busy abandoning this blog, my life felt like it was falling apart because OH and I decided that his son (we'll call him OHjr, since he's like a little clone) should move in with us.  Those of you who know me know that I am basically allergic to children.  I'm not terribly maternal, and am more likely to be nominated "Best Drill Sergeant Impersonator" than "Best StepMother" ever.  Nonetheless, it was in the best interest of the kid, so I didn't just agree, I'm actually the one that made the offer.  

Not to make this sound like it was some easy thing!  The first time OHjr came just to VISIT, I think my body had a premonition that it was going to drastically alter the course of the future, because I broke out in a bad case of the itchies, head to toe.  No joke.  My body was rejecting the proximity of somebody else's child who I hadn't even met.  That's deep.  Luckily, once he showed up, he was quite the sweet kid, he was 13 at the time but very very polite and I could see he just wanted to be loved and accepted.  So my itchies calmed down and I put my selfishness aside and decided to do the right thing for the kid. You can rest assured that many of my future posts will surely be me lamenting my trials and tribulations as I venture into step-monster-hood.  It's been an interesting two years, that's for sure! 


Since this is already most assuredly the longest blog post in the history of EVER, I'm going to sign off for now.  Also, it's almost 3 pm and I'm still in BED in my PAJAMAS.  Haven't been this much of a slacker in a loooong time!  But hey, it's Sunday, so I'm allowed.  It's been great catching up with you!