My furbabies, Stewie and Leela, are now officially 8 years old.

In May of 2002, we found a lady with 3 siamese litters born within a 2-4 day period (13 kittens total)  in Schenectady, NY, and so we drove from college to select our little ones.  When we arrived, only 4 kittens were left: 2 boys, 2 girls. Leela, a tiny, opinionated, strong-willed, vivacious little blue-point selected us and then we asked her to select the brother she wished to bring with her. Of the two boys left, both were seal-point and both were nursing from Leela’s mother (the only blue-point mom, and the only voluptuous one, which is definitely Leela’s body type). Leela’s pounced on Stewie’s tail and we chose him.  Since we were graduating within a couple of weeks and they were barely 6 weeks old, we paid up-front, and the kittens as a writhing mass taking over the bathroom were basically gone, the nice woman held onto them for us, using a terry hair-tie as a collar for each. The day before graduation, we picked them up in one carrier and their little mews in the car for the entire hour drive were adorable.

Eight years and four moves later, their mews have turned into yowls, which is far less adorable on a 6-hour car ride, and Leela has gone from being the larger, voluptuous one to the larger, slimmer lady while Stewie has just gotten more peculiar and, although he was slim for years, still really likes his food and now has gotten chubby (although the licked-bare belly does accentuate it). Although they no longer fly several feet in the air to bat at a dangling object, they still have some very kittenish moments and are extremely loving and cuddly.

Cat products state that cats are in their “senior” years at age 7, which is a very scary thought considering the amount of time I spend worrying about, loving, arguing with, or talking to my fluffies. However, considering they are strictly-indoor cats and in fine health (especially if Stewie can slim down a bit and stop the belly-licking), I imagine they’ll be a part of our family for another 5-10 years.

Stewie & Leela together, age 4

Leela, age 4, getting into trouble

Proud Stewie, age 4

Stewie & Leela, age 8

I know it seems like a silly little thing, but I am absolutely thrilled that my husband has made some new friends! Last weekend, I was unhappy that he left the house after freeing up my car to go prep for Sunday’s Magic tourney in Boston, and less happy when he called to say that he wouldn’t be home until 1am. However, when he got home and explained that he’d met some guys and went to one guy’s house and hung out there, I was thrilled!

This week, he’s stayed in contact with them through Magic websites and is hanging out most of tomorrow at his friend’s house to test Magic decks and watch the US vs. Canada gold medal hockey game. I’ll miss him, but I’m so, so happy that he found intelligent people with similar interest that he can spend time with and that he is feeling less isolated.

When it comes right down to it, Peter is more than my husband, he’s my best friend and I want him to be happy and content. I knew I could not do that on my own, but I can give him the freedom to spend time with friends.

Equality in a marriage can be difficult to achieve. When children are part of the equation, it’s much easier to set aside the generally selfish desire for procrastination and good-enough for the greater good. However, when children are not part of the equation, both parties avoid confrontation like an overdue-but-still-acceptable-within-the-next-week term paper, and one party has fibromyalgia, it can be much more difficult.

For years, my husband and I have found ways to avoid sucking it up and doing chores that we didn’t feel a pressing need for, like dusting or cleaning the toilet. It can also be very difficult to accept the onus of responsibility for certain chores, since it tends to become Your Job if you do it more than once.

In January 2007, I had my first major, super-duper flare of  fibromyalgia and Peter took up the slack (or, rather, all the chores) while I wore myself out commuting for an hour or two each day and teaching & planning for 10 more hours. Three years later, I go on leave, unable to work due to my fibromyalgia and migraines, but slowly strengthening and rebuilding my body and, as a part of that, taking my life and home back. Our living room is liveable and mostly clutter-free. I have sorted through all the mail from the past 9 months in the kitchen. We cleaned our bedroom, I have cleaned bathrooms, I am organizing “my” room, and I have done many, many, many loads of laundry. In addition, whenever possible, I do all the grocery shopping and errands. So, basically, I do 3 gym visits and 2 home workouts each week and do an errand or chore each day.

Unfortunately, the snow storm has done a great deal to mess up my life. I know, I know, that sounds very dramatic, but I have done yoga nearly every weekday with a DVD (”Healing Yoga for Aches and Pains”), had migraines nearly every day, and gained 4 lbs. To make this worse, although Peter was snowed-in with me most of last week, he spent two hours unburying his car on Tuesday, helped me with cleaning the bedroom Thursday, went to the supermarket with me for one and a half trips (Tuesday and Friday), and went off to play Magic with his friends on Friday evening and all day Sunday (he worked Saturday). He left the dishwasher unloaded many, many times (as though testing me to see if I will take care of it). I was forbidden from trying to unbury my car and Peter did not touch it after his car was free. His newest reason (as of yesterday) was that he wants to use his own shovel, not borrow one (so I searched online, discovered Lowes, Sears, Home Depot, and Target were all out, and ordered one on Amazon to get here by Friday). Monday, I borrowed Peter’s car, did 25 minutes (2.5 miles) on the recumbent elliptical cardio machine at the gym, got the now-crunchy oil and 3 cracking belts changed on Peter’s car, stopped off at Target and picked up some essentials (unfortunately, they refilled the wrong Rx), filled the tank up with gas, came home to unpack and eat lunch, then injured my neck and started a slow leak on Peter’s car trying to get out of his spot (the last burst of snow, he just backed over, but I didn’t enter the spot straight, so…), went to the doctor, worked myself up to talking to Peter about him giving me freedom to use my car or allow me to find and pay someone to dig me out, and then picked up Peter.

By the time Peter came out and got behind the wheel, he had little air in his passenger-side rear tire. After much drama, we were towed and it was patched, it was obvious I didn’t drive on it while it was flat (else it would have been ruined), but I went from feeling empowered to having to apologize over and over for doing nothing but try to work with what I was given (and saving his car from near-engine-failure due to having less than 50% of its required oil and that which was there was not liquid, but when I told him that during the day, he didn’t see why I was hassling him). I refused to drive his car since then and mine is still behind a 4 ft-high, 2-ft-deep wall of snow. This means I didn’t do the Aqua Aerobics I was so looking forward to since the last time I did it, 2 weeks ago, and I didn’t get to visit a church for Ash Wednesday and get a dirty forehead. I am in desperate need for Rx from Target and we need groceries and I should go to my semi-personal training…

But I don’t want to drive his car. The roads are bad enough without the pressure I feel under to keep his car pristine and, although I want groceries, a part of me feels resentful and frustrated by my limitations, the set-back, and the loss of freedom and feeling safe in my car. So maybe I’m projecting, but I also know that Peter didn’t care enough to make himself uncomfortable in order to give me freedom in a timely fashion. I understand not going out for Valentine’s Day, and not getting a card or flowers… I understand receiving just a good time together for our anniversary. Money’s tight, we’ve been spending plenty of time together… But… Well, sex isn’t the only way you can show affection, and I feel like he’s not trying. (As for that, I’ve been trying to send out signals, but -based on his responses during my impending and then very very short period- it appears that he is only interested if intercourse is possible.) So what was I hoping for? He could have done some of the unsanitary laundry (Stewie was using old laundry as a litterbox). He could have done a little to make my car easier to access, if not drive. He could have shoveled behind and around where he parks, so it’s less tricky. He could have given me a foot massage or given me time to mess with my RockBand avatar and practice before we started playing together. I had a card for him (a general I-Love-You, not specifically V-Day), but I never bothered to fill it out when I saw his attitude Saturday night and Sunday morning.

I know my being home puts additional pressure on Peter to stay employed. However, I continue to receive a paycheck, and I have a very specific set of plans for the future in order to make money and receive disability benefits if possible. Maybe he can help me do the laundry, or clean the area around the kitchen sink, or give me some cash (I have none right now) so I can either pay someone to dig out my car or get a taxi ride. Or maybe he can call the psych group and have them give him an appointment for individual counselling so he might start to be content.

I know that what I really want is to ***POOF*** get my body back to a reasonable weight (sub-140) and have the physical ability to work out the way I want to. I want to teach and then come home and do very little in order to make the house gorgeous and then sit back in my organized, gorgeous, comfy room. I want to be able to enjoy my husband and have him enjoy me. I want to be able to get pregnant and enjoy that pregnancy and then that baby and then, a year or two later, get pregnant again. I want a family and a life. But between migraines, fibro pain, and transport issues, I’m currently living the life of a shut-in (but without the perks of the occasional visitor). 

But right now, just asking for a balance of household responsibilities, and the occasional ”Thank you, I know X was a pain in the butt, so I really appreciate you taking the time and energy to do it,”  is what I need to do…

All of my natural grandparents have passed away. Both my paternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Grandma, and my maternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Babi (the Czech translation), lived long enough to have a significant impact on my life, my values, and my views of how upbringing can shape a child’s growth and future choices.  I love both of these grandmothers a great deal. Because of the memory loss from my ECT, the loss of Grandma at the age of 96 in late Spring of 2008 is practically as fresh as the loss of Babi this past December.

Just as an aside, I am extremely lucky to have been so warmly adopted by my husband’s very active, talented, and loving maternal grandmother and her husband nearly 8 years ago (when Peter and I adopted two kittens together) as well as welcomed into the very large extended family of my husband, although I feel myself keeping my distance from the matriarch, who was beginning to show the first stages of Alzheimer’s when I first met her, and I just had too much experience slowly losing Babi to the same disease. I do feel very close to the family I married into, for which I am extremely lucky and grateful.

But the focus of this is on the two grandmothers who have so recently passed. The loss of these two strong women hits me at odd times. The oddest is when I joke about whom my cats inherited various traits from. When I thought about it, it became very clear that many of their most ingrained traits correlated to those of my grandmothers… so much so, that I decided to dedicate a post to it.

Leela and Grandma

Leela and Grandma are very alike. They take pride in their appearance and the image they show to the world. They also both have positioned themselves as Queen of their respective people. Be it a circle of friends or a family, they are the sun around which the others orbit. Both Grandma and Leela are extremely talkative, with large vocabularies, and have the astounding ability to complain or kibbutz while showing happiness or appreciation. They are both loving, but it is often a slightly more distant love. In Grandma because she lived so far away and was infirm for such a large part of my life and I was born so much later than her other grandchildren, and in Leela because I am, after all, just a servant.

Stewie and Babi

Both Stewie and Babi have issues with anxiety. Babi was always very concerned about social mis-steps and being destroyed socially by any minor mistake. This came out in many, many ways and touched me by my forming a long, long list of rules(which is constantly being updated and amended) for appropriate behavior (actions, reactions, and inaction) in various social situations. Stewie has anxiety over everything, often acting like a spy in enemy territory (I like to call it “playing Secret Agent Man”). When he’s in anxiety mode, he will jump at a moved shadow, will use a mirrored door to see around corners, has a special way of walking up and down our stairs so he doesn’t make it creak (which made me worry about his joints for a short while), will not allow himself to be touched, and will sit only in specific places. (Other times, he will lie in front of a window on his back with his belly exposed, purring as I walk by. He’s an enigma.) In addition, due to both stress and, possibly, allergies, Stewie has licked his belly and inner thighs completely bare. (Which I will come back to in the third major similarity.) In addition, both Stewie and Babi give of their whole selves when they do express their love which is occasionally overwhelming, but always deeply appreciated and reciprocated. Lastly, both speak with an accent.

Stewie’s Thighs and Both Grandmothers

Like most cats, Stewie often presents his butt to me at eye-level for no apparent reason. Also like most cats, he has extra skin at his thighs which allows for greater range of motion. Unlike most cats, however, this extra skin is not furry. Instead, looking at his behind, I see pale, pinkish wrinkly flesh starting at the knees and meeting at the middle (although he left that part untouched). It seems slightly inappropriate and reminds me way too much of all the times I saw my grandmothers naked and could not look away from what might one day happen to my body. (For this reason, I am looking into ways to clothe that part of his body. Chaps? A doggie shirt on backward, with cut-outs so he can use the litterbox? I will find a way!)

I hope this was at least mildly entertaining.

Well, there are three pains keeping me awake right now, yet again.

Number 3: I got my first cavities in my last teeth. In other words, my wisdom teeth are so far back in my mouth that it can be painful to brush them and I wound up with a cavity in two of them (upper right and lower left). I’ve never had a cavity before, so I’m scared, even though they say it’s no big deal and just small surface cavities… I know fillings crack, fall out, the tooth can rot behind the filling and it may need to be redrilled, and I know I’ll continue to have problems with my wisdom teeth because they’re tiny, craggy, and really really far back. But the dentist refuses to pull them as requested and instead is filling them. Ugh.

Number 2: Money. I just spent $5000 between my dentist, old bills from my hospitalization (they sent 12 bills for different days, but the same amount, as well as 8 additional bills and I misunderstood and only paid 1), and car insurance. Our master bath needs to be fixed. We need to keep eating and living in our home and doctors and meds keep costing money. I’m trying not to worry – money from my grandmother will cover that $5000 – but… well, I’m trying not to worry.

Number 1: Physical Pain. Yet again, I can’t sleep because I’m in too much pain. Heat is too overwhelming for the upper back and vicodin wore off. I think it’ll be 1 more vicodin and a few lidocaine patches so I can go back to sleep. Tomorrow, I may just stretch at home and get what sleep I can and wake at noon for my various appointments. I worry that I’ll have to clean up the guest room enough so that I can use it on days when it hurts to think that my motions are limited or I might get any physical pressure on any body part due to pillows, cats, or a stray, lovingly cuddly limb. <sigh>

This is really screwing with my attempts to achieve better sleep hygiene.

Luckily, I’m exhausted and nearly ready to apply that lidocaine, take a vicodin, and curl into bed with my hubby and kitties.