BEST CAT PLAY TIME EVER

Oh my gosh, I just can't keep it to myself! My friend Mira just sent me an amazing link to cat wigs. CAT WIGS! Wigs for your cat!! As if that isn't exciting enough, I followed a link from that site to urban beast, where I found these incredible photos. Hope you're as tickled as I am!!

Happiness

I feel I must share my happiness--I haven't felt truly happy in my life for years. I have had moments of happiness, joyous days and whatnot, but I don't think I've felt generally/regularly happy & contented since before I left for vet school. It feels so awesome (restful!). My decision not to go back to school right now, I think, has a lot to do with that. Not because I don't want to go to school, persay, but because when/if I go to school, I want it to be for the right reasons, all in good time. I kept putting things off that I desperately wanted to do, in order to 'get my life in order' first. Now, I've realized it's going to take a while to get my life in order (and in the meantime 'Now' is all we have, so I might as well make the best of it). It's been almost a year since I've been back home, and I don't feel like I've straightened out a single thing despite months of applying to jobs, thinking about school, etc. So, *aha!* perhaps by doing the things that I love, my life will straighten itself out--passion leading to what I need, and all that. In just a week, I've gone to a community meeting about a planned bike-trail in Lexington (yay! reminds me of Boulder!!), attended the Wednesday dance classes at Mecca that I've been aching to join in, kept my kitchen fairly clean, and continued to work at Worlds Apart, but in a happier frame of mind.
Several people have been a little bewildered by my decision not to go to physician assistant school, so here's a bit more explanation. Toward the end of the year, I was feeling very cramped in my current job--it's a job that I'm grateful to have, and I don't mind the work (I enjoy it well enough most of the time), but I never saw myself working in women's retail--ever, let alone for 6 years (on and off). I'll spare you the details of what I don't like about my job; suffice to say I'm definitely not passionate about it. I don't make enough $ to be sustainable in any way here, however, here it is a year later, and Ben and I are still alive, and haven't been evicted into the streets. Going to school would mean having NO income (Ben's been looking for work unsuccessfully since September, though his main thrust of energy is still toward FlowMingle, the dating site he's been working on) and spending $4000 on classes I've already taken (pre-reqs for PA school wouldn't count my vet school experience/credits for physiology, anatomy, medical terminology, or microbiology)--and then I still wouldn't know if I'd get into school or not...and if I did, it would mean 2.5 years (starting a year from now...so almost 4 years--which is what I've already spent on something I WAS passionate about, but which failed anyway) of schooling before making any income. I have lived so long in a state of sacrifice (not living with Ben, not dancing anywhere near as much as I'd like to, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt), and I'm not willing to do it again until I'm passionate about my decision. Going to PA school offered me an answer out of crushing debt, but I felt like even though I would probably enjoy the job as much as I enjoy my current job (not terrible, not great either, but doable), I would be setting myself up to be a slave to my past. That is, the story of "I'm a PA because I couldn't hack it as a vet" instead of what I hope to be able to say one day, "I'm a Such-and-such because I'm passionate about this work. I go into work every day feeling really really good about what I'm doing in the world." Living a life devoid of passion or conviction, in my experience, is hardly worth living. Suicide has seemed like a viable option, living that way. And so, I've voted for my life, instead--keeping a job that is generally neutral (and, I say again, one that I'm grateful to have in this economy), and spending my free time engaging in things I'm passionate about with the hope that those passions will pull me out of this job in due time, without having to give up my measly (but neccessary) income in the meantime. I think that's a pretty good summation of how I've been feeling. I hope that makes sense to you. It's taken me some time to figure out, in the words of my head, what I've been feeling in my heart/gut. Translation is always something I've enjoyed. (o:

Decided

Today was the day that I was supposed to register for classes at UK (pre-requisites for physician assistant school). I've spent many hours during the past week or two thinking about my life. I'm reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose as well as Gregg Levoy's Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, and they both prompted me to think about things differently--that is, NOT to think about them so much as to FEEL about them. I stayed awake all night a few days ago, mulling. I started that next day with tons of questions with no obvious answers, except that going to PA school was not the answer. Since then, I've been talking with friends and family about this--sort of ferreting out whether this was a decision I felt I could actually live with or whether it was just a late-night whim. My gut/heart has been staunch in maintaining the not-going-to-school-now mantra, which is interesting to me considering how stabilizing having PA school on the horizon made me feel for the past several months.
But that's just it: I think that the decision to go to PA school was one of impatience and "this makes good logical sense" instead of passion or "because-it's-actually-good-for-me". The 2 things I've learned from this whole getting dismissed from vet school situation are 1) I'm impatient and, 2) devastation takes longer to recover from than I was allowing myself ---these combined lead to me being dismissed because: Tufts Vet School Curriculum + Repeated Devastation with No Recovery Time = Too Much To Handle = Worst Devastation Yet.
So what now? I don't know. Chelsea's trying to get me to move to Boulder. San Francisco is also an option. Moving would necessitate some changes which would probably be good for me and Ben, though Ben points out that making changes is not moving-dependent. I know that I don't want to be in women's retail much longer (I never thought I'd be doing it this long in the first place...), I know that I am very excited by environmental/farming ideas, I know that I miss teaching dance, and that I'm really excited for FlowMingle to take off this year. We'll see where these points lead us.


On a complete side note, I took Parsnip to get spayed today. She's home now, no longer intact, and has helped herself to the cat-toy basket and is wobbily batting toys around. Awwwww.

I am happy with my decision to listen to my gut instead of my head for once. It doesn't speak up very often! (maybe I've just not been a good listener, or my gut and head have been in cahoots til now).

Cake Wrecks

Some people can make really awesome cakes.

Most people make normal cakes.

But how is it possible that these "professional" cakes make it out the door??!










As seen on Cake Wrecks.

Tree!

Ben and I got our first ever real christmas tree! For the past several years, we've just taped lights or wrapping paper in the shape of a tree to the wall, and then hung ornaments on that. And that's been good for us--space saving, low budget (zero budget), and conversation piece all in one. But we were really waxing nostalgic on the lack of spruce/pine smell in the air. The Tree In A Can helped for the first half of December, but wasn't *quite* good enough. So we went out in search of some cheap garlands or wreaths to put up to make our place smell like Christmastime. The first place we stopped, the wreaths were $20, but the little cut trees were only $15! So we excitedly took it home and decorated it. I think it looks so cute. I'm so happy about it, it's the first real tree I've had as an adult.