R.I.P. Oreo (1993-2009)

Some of you may remember me talking about my cat Oreo in previous posts. We had to have him put down a week ago. Actually, my family put him down a week ago -- I was still in New York finishing up the semester. Oreo was in a lot of pain and was far beyond the point of saving. Our vet wanted to put him to sleep months ago, but my father stubbornly said no. Dad was so attached to Oreo that we had to start the cat on an IV regimen. Three times a week, we pumped saline into Oreo to keep his kidneys going. Last week, when Oreo stopped eating and started hallucinating, Dad realized that it was time.

Oreo was 16. He lived a long and good life. We miss you, bud.

Purple with Envy

Well, it's wedding season. I have yet another cousin getting married (younger than me, of course). So naturally I needed to go out and buy another dress. I scored a really nice one on sale at Nordstrom. This is what I'm wearing to the wedding in a couple of weeks:


I'm not terribly excited about this wedding. In fact, my family members are taking bets on how long this marriage will last. But despite the foreboding cloud of doom that will hang over these star-crossed lovers on their big day, I'm super enthusiastic about my dress.

I'm even more pumped because I just finished my first year of grad school, and instead of stressing over 150-page papers and internships, my biggest problem for the foreseeable future is what color I should paint my toenails if I wear silver shoes with this dress. Thoughts?

R.I.P. Frankie

Frankie Manning passed away this morning. He was 94. Don't know who that is? Allow me to refresh your memory. Also, this article probably explains him better than I did.

(Edited on 4/28: This nice tribute appeared in The New York Times Dance Section today.)

Now go hug somebody you love.

Boys Will Be Boys

We found this in our mailbox yesterday morning:


Translation for those who can't read the handwriting:

Dear girls upstairs,
Last night some idiots were throwing bags of trash around, and one landed on your front porch. If you could, please kindly put that bag out on the curb with the trash on Monday. Thanks!
--Guys at 818

The "guys at 818" live in the house next door to ours. After we got this note, we looked out onto our second-story balcony, and sure enough there was a big bag of smelly trash sitting there all casual-like, as though it had been there forever.

How much money do you want to bet that the "idiots" who were "throwing bags of trash around" were actually the (very drunk) boys next door?

Their aim was impressive. It's not easy to heave a heavy bag of trash onto someone's second-floor balcony. They get major bonus points for doing it while intoxicated.

Oh, the joys of living next to frat boys...

You Know It's Going to Be a Rough Day When...

...you set a loaf of bread on your stovetop on the exact same burner that one of your roommates accidentally left turned on.

Don't try this at home, kids. You know those plastic bags that bread comes packaged in? Those are flammable. I learned the hard way.

(In case you were wondering, I'm fine and the apartment is still standing. However, the loaf of bread and my dignity are not doing so well.)

Who Knew?

This morning my roommates and I were talking about bugs, specifically which ones bother us the most/least. I mentioned that flies are least offensive to me, whereupon my roommates informed me that flies throw up every time they land on something. (And by "throw up," apparently that means "rub their legs together vigorously.")

First of all, eww. Second of all, am I the last person on earth to just find out about this? How come I am the only person in my apartment who did not know this fact? People, WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME THESE THINGS?!

A New Direction

"If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience." --Robert Fulghum

This quote is a pretty accurate description of my life since August, when I moved to New York and started grad school. Everybody always asks me, "How are you? How is school? Do you like it?" and I can never think of anything more clever or succinct than "Good. Life is good."

Life is not perfect, though. If you followed my status updates on Facebook from January to early March, or if you called me on the phone a month and a half ago, I probably would not have described my life as "good." I just barely survived the insane winter up here in the continental United States' fourth-snowiest city. As if the 150 inches of snow weren't bad enough, they brought all kinds of fun complications like:

• Squirrels in the attic
• Ice damming
• Endless shoveling of an endlessly long driveway
• Absolutely un-driveable scary white-out conditions
• Wearing three shirts and three pairs of socks every day
• Killer icicles on my house (and my neighbors' houses) that looked like this:

(This is actually my next-door neighbor's house, but mine was just as bad.)

I'm still alive, though. And content even! I don't know if it's age, maturity, or what, but I have somehow learned to compartmentalize events into the controllable and the uncontrollable, and I have been adjusting my level of anxiety accordingly.

It also helps that I really do like my classes. I mean, come on, if I hated my classes, there is no way I would have put up with the kind of extreme weather that we got this winter. Even by local standards, this winter was really, really, REALLY bad. Also, if I hated my classes, there is no way I would be paying astronomical sums of money for this degree.

For one of the first times in my life, I believe in what I am doing. It's not that I didn't believe in getting a college education or working for a living, but the college and the job that I picked were not right for me. I spent a lot of time being miserable. I spent even more time making myself even more miserable because I couldn't figure out why I was unhappier than everybody else.

I don't know exactly where I'm headed, but I like the direction that I'm heading in much better than the path I was following before. (Also, it doesn't hurt that our basketball team is kicking major butt in the tournament this year.)

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting more, but I need time to myself. I need to keep living in the moment and learning more about what makes me happy. I hope that you have already found what makes you happy and that you are savoring it to the fullest.

Until later,
Kay