apropos of nothing: January 2012

Monday, January 09, 2012

The Phases of Zelda

It's pretty common knowledge that I am a tremendous cat person. I like cats so much, in fact, that I have three of them. I put a lot of thought into the kitties that I have - aesthetically I mean - and so I have three lovely kitties which appeal to my vanity in various ways. Elvis is white with a mohawk and two different colored eyes, Sirius is a floppy tuxedo cat with super long teeth, and Zelda is a redhead with green eyes. Needless to say, they are cuter than a basket of kittens, the lot of them.

When we brought Zelda home on the first day she could not have been less pleased with her change of circumstances. She never stood all the way up, instead slinking around the house in a permanent crouch and crawling into the nearest cabinet space available to avoid us. We were pretty impressed that she knew how to open doors because, dude, she's a cat! We were also kind of devastated that we had adopted this chubby, hateful little hussy of a cat.

(hussy Zelda)

It didn't take her very long to warm to us though, and soon she was the lap cat I had always dreamed of (Elvis and Sirius don't play that). A couple of months into her time with us, we had to stop closing the door to our bedroom at night because she would go all juggernaut cat and ram herself into the door until one of us gave in and let her in. At this point she sits with us at the table while we eat dinner.

LIKE A HUMAN.

(Human, dinner table Zelda)

She sits on the toilet seat every morning and watches me get ready for work and, as long as I am walking around the house, she is always right behind me. At night in bed, if I roll over, she has to adjust herself to ensure that there is an adequate measure of contact between her body and mine. This last part ended up keeping me up half of the night last evening as I have a newly minted tattoo on my back. I cannot lay on it and neither can she. As many times as I pushed her away she pushed back. WTF Zelda?

she must sleep on my fanny!

Ladies and gentlemen, what is next? I want to say that this bothers me, but I love it. I finally have a cat that doesn't mind me bothering the shit out of her! The catch is just that I have to be cool with her bothering the shit out of me back - I can handle that.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Goals for 2012

2011 was fantastic, but no year is without undesirable aspects. The most important thing to me is that we learn from the bad and constantly work to improve those characteristics of our situation which we are unhappy with.

I don't believe in "New Year's" resolutions to modify behavior, because I feel like those modifications should be made as one becomes aware of them. Why people choose to wait until January to assess themselves and commit to improvement is beyond me. I do, however, believe in setting goals.

SO:

Cory and I collectively aim to go out less, thus saving money for more important things.
The back yard will be overhauled, period. Moose has made his best effort to destroy any semblance of what was formerly a source of pride for yours truly and I believe I have identified a way to make it so that even our natural disaster of a puppy can't eff it up.
Take ownership of the dog my father in law very unceremoniously stuck us with - and be glad about it.
Make improvements to the house.
Travel - TRAVEL - Travel - t r a v e l
~~Unsubscribe to mailing lists for the myriad stores that flood my inbox on a daily basis and make me think that spending money is a good idea.~~ DONE
Call my mother EVERY day.
Take at least one photo per day.
Blog more.
Yelp more.
Cellar more beer.

A year is a long time so I am hopeful that most, if not all, of these things will happen. Honestly, I am just stoked to spend another year with my amazing partner and our ginormous family of pets.