Miller High Life

Until last weekend I hadn't seen Jen since I met Milo. During the swirl of events leading up to her wedding, I got to see her on an almost weekly basis, but since that's died down and she's shifted from Miller to Kelly and been running marathons and adopting cats like some kind of addict, our visits had become way too infrequent.

So, this past weekend we planned a little girly get-together in Cincinnati at Jen's house, where the kitties make you want to steal and the main ingredient in all the food is love. I've visited Jen everywhere she has ever lived, and every time I look forward to it like it's a vacation. I know I'm going to sleep in a bed cleaner than any bed I've ever slept in, eat delicious foods made from scratch and come to know a relaxation that my chaos coping mechanisms won't allow.

It's a little joke between us that the only thing missing from Jen retreats is the chocolate on the pillow. Well, this weekend, Jen had even paid attention to that little detail.

Let me just tell you how it started. I clunked around Saturday morning in a rush to get some work done and get out of town. I left a mess of a dollhouse in the corner and undone dishes in the sink, threw my toothbrush and some clothes in a shopping bag, and hopped in the car. To go from that frenzy state to a Jen state literally lifts the fog out of your mind.

I walked into Jen's house, which is remarkably comfortable despite its pristine state, and was greeted by the smell of homemade minestrone soup on the stove top. And, since that just wouldn't look pretty enough in a bowl by itself, Jen had baked up a fresh loaf of basil beer bread to go with it. She'd also already been on a 7 mile jog that morning.
To recap, I had sat on a computer, grabbed my toothbrush, and driven to Cincinnati in the same time Jen had run 7 miles, made a homemade soup and baked a loaf of bread.

While the bread was finishing baking, Jen pulled out some veggies and prepped a breakfast casserole for the next morning. I drank a V8.
At that point I asked if she wanted to marry me and Mack and be our wife. Or, if Mack was a deal breaker, would she just marry me and bring Milo to replace Mack?

Lucky for Mike, she's happily married.

Since I've been having kitty fever, a condition which can be directly blamed on Jen, I was super excited to also visit Milo and meet Daisy (of Love). Since kitty sitting Milo, Mack and I have joked that when we do get a cat, we need to send it to Jen to get it the right way. We will ruin it. We ruin anything we're supposed to take care of for more than 12 consecutive hours.
Those two cats. That's all I can say. They lick each other and wrestle each other and vie for the seat in front of the back door and play tug of war with a shoe string. They are Pete-and-Repeat at ridiculous proportions. Daisy would lay on the window sill, which was barely big enough for her tiny body... Milo would lay on the window sill, with half of him resting lopsided on the back of the couch.
The kitty watching was a blast, but we did venture out of the house to go to the Art Museum and see the impossible things people do with wood. Then we went to the Krohn Conservatory and learned about bonsais. Then we went out for Thai food. Finally we retreated back to the Jen Inn and got down to the serious business of relaxing with a glass of wine while watching a funny movie.

Finally, I got some Jen time.

A French Slip of the Tongue

Last weekend I had a dream that Mack was gay with his friend Rob and had decided to leave me for the male persuasion. I was all snotty from sad about it, but he was business as usual... except for the being gay part.

Not even Shahin had sympathy for me. She was like, "Well, people are born that way. You can't change it." And then she hauled another box of my stuff out of the house.

I told Mack about it so he'd know why I was mad at him, and since Rob is like a pet, I told him about it too. It started out like this, "Please promise me you won't be stealing my husband with your gay love." And then we got into all the gritty details about the threesome in the bathtub with this girl named Colleen, who was playing the role of mattress more than seductress, and how judo was the gateway to gay.

Well, things were on the mend and we were all laughing about it by the time Mack and Rob came home from judo tonight. I was taking the recycling out when I saw them walking up the sidewalk with another judo friend, this one a new recruit living in Lexington as a refugee from Congo. He hasn't been here long and knows no English. But French, he knows French.

Rob comes in and while he's washing his hands in the bathroom, we joke about the dream. As our conversation continues in the kitchen, where the Congo man is standing, I say, "Yeah, we know how you like a menage a trois."

So here's this skinny refugee guy who knows nothing about me and Mack and Rob, and Rob walks in like he owns the place, and I just touched the guy on the back and gestured inward to try to get him to come away from the door and take a seat, and now we're talking about menage a trois. It'd be like if I went to Iran and was there for one minute, just inside the door and someone patted me on the back and then two seconds later said "gang bang" amidst an ocean of Farsi.

I have no idea what ran through his mind at that point, but he was gone within 5 minutes. C'est la vie.

Uh, Smokey, this looks like trouble...

The forest fires in LA became a fixture in our lives while we were out there. The city is such a mess of concrete that it seems like it's be impossible to incinerate it, but the forest surrounding the city is desert delicate. So much so that Mack's dad once got pulled over for throwing his cigarette out the window while he was driving.

One of the biggest fires last year, the one where a bunch of celebrities lost their homes, threatened to take out the Getty Villa and lots of them have come dangerously close to the incredible Griffith Observatory, the incomparable Hollywood Bowl and the famed Hollywood sign. During that one, we went to get in our car and saw these chunks of dust swirling around, thinking what could this be? Then we realized the fire was making it rain ash in our neck of the woods, so much so that a layer had landed on our car and had to be dusted off.

I found this footage of the fire they're dealing with now, and whoa. It is unbelievable.


This is not going to be good for the housing crisis...

I think it's called association...

I'm learning about electrons and reduction and oxidation and covalent bonds and polarity. Which is to say that I'm learning funny little shortcuts like "the story of the lion"... wherein if you Lose Electrons there's Oxidation (LEO) and if you Gain Electrons there's Reduction (GER).

Those funny little shortcuts made me remember these photos of white tigers that I stumbled across recently on the book of magical things known as the Internet, and if this whole thing isn't the universe's way of telling me to go on safari, I don't know what is.

a National Geographic photo of the day of a diving tiger

a retarded tiger... I never really thought about a retarded tiger before

Summer Times

Since summer is winding down and my life hiatus of the last 6 months is coming to an end, well, it's making me need a vacation.

Or at least a look back at one of the best yet.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Nitsirk spelled backwards is Kristin

Kristin is one of my favorite people in the entire world. Not only does she know how to make world-class gravy, but she is also never without snacks and is always, always, always up for some fun. Plus, she is adorable in a blinged-out, over-sized Escalade with her seat totally erect.

Well, Miss Nitsirk stopped in from Vegas last weekend for Granny's birthday and Ryan's birthday, and to celebrate her special appearance, the birthdays and Will's acceptance to UNLV (shout out Will!), I followed her to Marikka's, where I ran into some old(er than Ryan) pals. You may have heard of them before... Brett, Jon & Amy.

At one point cameras came out like crazy so I joined in to capture the debauchery brought to you by Washington Apples. The next day was a struggle, but that night was a total blast.
* Sorry to anyone I may have pinched or whose nipples I may have tweaked.

Things I Learned at School Today

This education stuff is fascinating. Even though 85% of the people at my school are morons.

Today in my developmental psych class we watched a video (watching a video on the first day of actual class... is that a copout?) about conception and sex and birth. It was a typical school video in its sterility, but I couldn't believe how they'd captured the clips that make up the film. They filmed an ejaculation from INSIDE the body, so you could see all the man spunk shoot at the woman's cervix. Then they zoomed in ridiculously close to the fallopian tube lining and on sperm with gimpy necks. It was incredible.

The big takeaway for me was that sperm have it rough. They are like little soldiers put in impossible situations, and yet somehow, babies are born all the time. For instance, when the sperm is in the man's body, it's dangling in a sack in his hot crotch trying not to cook to death. Then, when he leaves the hot sack, he and millions of his buddies have to swim up the littlest, most cramped tube and out the shaft of the penis before they even get to the vagina. Once they hit the battleground, the vagina tries to kill them with acid. If they survive that, cells in the vagina start eating them alive. If they make it past the vagina, the cervix squirts out this sedcutive little river to make it easier for them to swim through, sort of like a little temptress who's luring them deeper into a trap. Most of them get disoriented and just ram against the wall and die. Those who make it through, they have to swim UPSTREAM through the fallopian tubes. There are little cilia in the fallopian tubes that actually create a current that makes their mission even more impossible. And then, even after they swim all that way and if they don't die before they make it to the ovary, then they might realize, oh crap, this is the wrong freaking ovary! There's no egg here!

So millions of sperm set out to find the egg and usually only about 50 make it. Which means, as Mack pointed out, we start out the best of the best and it's all downhill from there.

Also, do you know why the U.S. isn't on the metric system? Would it suprise you to know that Thomas Jefferson tried to adopt the metric system back when he was president? Would it suprise you even more to know that his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, tried to acclimate people to the metric system by switching our money from shillings and pounds to dollars and cents? Would you be floored that I now know that's why Hamilton is on the $10 bill? And since they redid the money recently, Hamilton is looking like one sexy metric system supporter.

Analyze This, Duex

Last night, while Mack was sleeping soundly under the breeze of the ceiling fan, Jen drove us off a narrow road and we almost plummeted to our deaths.

It started out as a fun little excursion, a little girlfriend road trip with Jen behind the wheel, me in the backseat, and some strange person I don't remember in the passenger seat. We were heading out to a little park at the end of a narrow road and were pretty excited to spend the day relaxing.

But this road was no ordinary narrow road. Unless your narrow roads are ordinarily suspended over enormous bodies of water and lacking anything remotely resembling a guard rail.

Despite the danger lurking at every... place... we calmly chatted about life. Easy breezy. And then, as we rounded a gentle curve, Jen misjudged her tires and the front right one slipped off the edge of the road.

The car tilted forward and we looked at each other and let out as sigh. Not a scream as you might expect, or a holy fuck we're going to die, but a sigh. Like, a "here we go again" sigh.

Because I am apparently an expert at cars plummeting into bodies of water, I advised my carmates to go ahead and open their doors so that when we landed in the water, we could easily escape the sinking vehicle. I also decided that, since I was again soooo good at this type of scenario, I'd go ahead and grab my satchel, which was carrying my laptop and my iPhone, even though all the survival guides tell you to forget about your purse. Those things clearly don't consider a person's devotion to Apple products.

We hit the water and all of us safely escaped the vehicle in those few seconds it takes for the car to fill up and start sinking. I started swimming to the bridge support, hoping that if I could just get my electronics out of the water quickly, maybe they could recover. But when I looked behind me, I saw Jen was still hanging onto the car door. Like it was a floaty.

Again with the "here we go again" sigh.

Since my electronics were in all likelihood already ruined, I swam over to her just as the car started to pull her under, grabbed her arm, and brought her to the surface. Together we swam toward the bridge support, but before we reached it we were magically transported to the roadway. I started unpacking my wet electronics and asking other drivers if anyone had a blow dryer.

So, "here we go again" sigh, what does this one mean?

For a review of the last one, which is freakishly similar, click here.

So that crisis I was having...

Tomorrow I'm going back to school. Not for graphic design or professional organizing or photography or any of those other creative things I was thinking about doing with my life. Nope. Because that would require self-motivation, and at this point, I need some major structure.

Instead, I'm going to nursing school.

Those words still feel as weird to me as "husband" did when I first got married.

I'm taking psychology and chemistry and anatomy and the labs that go with them. I bought notebooks and textbooks. I've forked over almost $2000, so I am literally invested. I have everything I need except the confidence.

I know I'm smart, but really, I haven't learned with the intensity of education since my senior year in high school. College wasn't that tough for me, probably because I never took a single math or science course, but high school was freaking intense. I was learning physics and calculus and Spanish and Shakespeare and history and anatomy... in a single day.

Now I can barely keep up with the Kardashians. Or what day it is.

Tomorrow will be my first test.

Kitty Fever

Dear Jennifer,

Please give me Milo again. I'm in desperate need of some fluffy kitty sized love and can't guarantee I won't be going to the humane society tomorrow.

I neeeeeed one of these.
Love,
Amber

Shark Attack

I am terrified of sharks. But... I also love them.

This past week was Shark Week on Discovery and oh my god where have I been for the last however many years this awesomeness has been on TV?!! I watched early 1900's reenactments of the New Jersey killings that inspired Jaws, where a shark headed more than a mile into a river off the Atlantic, and lost myself in shows called Deadly Waters, Sharkbite Summer and Great White Appetite.

Apparently I wasn't the only one overly excited about this lineup.


Dude, when you've got journalists being freed in North Korea or an attempted solution to the auto industry crisis up against Shark Week... tough call, right?

I would have eaten the apple. And loved it. And passed its deliciousness along.

I have the National Geographic Picture of the Day as one of the feeds on my Google Homepage. Yes, I did just vomit a whole lot of technological info all over the place.

I've added little coves in Scotland and fabric dying medinas in Morocco to my Must See Travel List thanks to this daily look at the world, and it even inspired me to embark on a color-based monthly photography project last winter.

Today this stunning little snake leaf guy showed up on my screen and for whatever reason, I felt it was magically delicious.
In other words, this is awesome and you should enjoy it. Every day.

Dr. Sexypants

Today, Mack had his white coat ceremony, which officially means he's no longer just accepted to med school but that he's officially in med school. He also got a pin and took an oath, both of which made me laugh because he is so not a lapel pin wearer and oaths make his head explode.
This journey to med school started years ago, with him taking a history class online at WKU with a teacher named Ms. Plummer who was a teacher freak. The class was the required history class, 108 or 109, and it should have been a cake walk... but not with Ms. Plummer. Mack watched so many hours of online lectures that I started to worry he was having an internet affair with someone majorly dorky.

That class led to an online science class where he had to watch animated roly polies walk from one petri dish to another. And then count them. Very complicated stuff.

When we moved to LA, Mack jumped right into school again, this time going full time. Unfortunately, he didn't have a high school diploma, so during his first week, he had to take his GED to keep his spot. Yes, his GED. It was a proud moment for both of us.
Each quarter he would get special permission to take more than 24 credit hours, none of which were easy hours to earn. His schedule was full of chemistry, physics, biology... classes I avoided in college. Then, after his first year, he started studying for his MCAT, an effort that required him to teach himself organic chemistry. Through it all, he kept his focus and maintained a life/school/judo balance that was admirable... aside from the fact that he never did the dishes or made dinner.

Once the MCAT hurdle was cleared, the next step was the applications process. This cost thousands of dollars and almost cost Mack his ego. Singing your praises while simultaneously expressing humility takes a certain finesse, and Mack, who has a lot of brass on him (heard that on Burn Notice recently and really wanted to use it), just wasn't good at essay writing. We emailed draft after draft of his personal statement back and forth, him providing the facts while I added the humanity. Then, once that was finished, it was time for individual school essays... and secondary application essays... and shopping for a pin stripe suit that would make him look doctorly and CIA-grade sexy at the same time... and calls with lawyers to get records sealed... and court hearings... and interviews that involved coffee (and everyone knows what the coffee can do to you).
Basically, this med school pursuit process took FOREVER. So, tonight we will drink champagne and high five to celebrate this surreal accomplishment while we get a good look at each other that will hopefully tide us over for the next four years.

Congratulations Mack. I am so proud of you.

If a tree falls downtown during a thunderstorm and traps a girl, why don't I hear it?

During the storm that turned High Street into an urban river today, I propped open the front door and watched the cars raft past my house. The lightning took that as an invitation to come into the living room, so I ended up holding my computer in my arms and my phone in my hand and looking out the door from the hallway. Basically, I looked tough.
While the rain tore through town, the newsroom people and meteorologists on TV tried to relay that it was freaking serious but there was no cause for alarm. Also that rush hour in Stamping Ground was really going to blow and that a girl was trapped in her car after a tree fell on it while she was driving down East High Street.

What? I'd been staring at East High Street for the last 30 minutes and I'd missed that?!
Apparently so.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Mid-Lift-Off Colllision!

My brother-in-law, Bubba (no joke), is a pilot. He is also one of the funniest people alive and once tricked me into walking full force into a tree.

Well, check out what happened to Bubba yesterday as he was zooming down the runway about to lift off and a blue heron decided to do the same thing in the same place at the same time.

(I know he says it's a buzzard here, but he later found the bird's head,
which, you know, cleared things up.)

I've always sort of thought Bubba was pretending about being a pilot. It's not that he hasn't had the training or doesn't have the brains... it's just that when the people you know well become professionals at something, the eliteness of that position is erased and you're like, they trust Bubba to fly a plane?!! The same guy whose preferred brand of relaxer is the one with the smiling little black girl on it? What's next, Mack becoming a doctor?!!

Camping, Front-Yard-Style

While my dear Elijah was in town for a visit with her adult man toddler Sam, we headed to Gravel Switch for a few days to take in Emily's log cabin, creeks filled with chrinoids, hiking loops around lakes, four-wheelers, competitive matches of Corn Hole, and even a round of front-yard-camping.
My front yard has a road called High Street running through it, so even though Tommy, Emily's son, was completely unimpressed by front yard camping, I was in full nature retreat mode. There were picnic tables, a fire pit, benches, an already pitched tent, and a stack of firewood. It was like all the work of camping had been done for you and all you had to do was spray on some Deep Woods Off and get to making a fire. And S'mores.

Sam brought the mallows.

And got a lesson from the pros.

Do you remember how good S'mores are? I think they've got to be one of the best desserts ever made, and I'd forgotten all about the extent of their deliciousness until this camp out made me an addict. At one point a chocolate square came down to me or the baby, and I seriously thought about stealing it. Sam removed any say I had in the matter by just taking it right from me and plopping it in his drooly, gooey mouth.

After our sweet binge, Sam played around on a rusty old tricycle and in a gravel filled sandbox hours past his bedtime. Liz and I drank Budweiser and kept an eye out for lightning bugs and chatted about whether or not the lightning and thunder would actually bring rain. Tommy played with a lighter. Liz and I are up for Babywatchers of the Year.
Liz really wanted Sam to see the lightning bugs, and man, does she know that baby. He loved them. Tommy and I would catch one and bring it to him and he'd poke at it and watch it crawl around, and when it would inevitably fall to the ground or fly away, he'd ask for more. I showed him this old trick I learned when I lived at a seedy apartment complex growing up, where you rip the butt off and write your name on your arm and watch it glow. It didn't work as well as I remember, probably because now I feel guilty about it. We also used to pluck their butts off and put them on our ring finger and pretend they were diamond rings.
Since it was a couple hours past Sam's bedtime, Liz put him down after all the lightning bug excitement. Tommy and I hung out up by the house, looking at the stars and talking in a whisper so the baby wouldn't be too jealous. We took breaks to tend to the fire and I decided to break out my poi stuff. Tommy got pretty excited about seeing fire spinning, mostly because "of the chance of death associated with it."

The best part of the front-yard-camping experience, though, was that when the rain -- and by rain I mean holy jesus thunderstorm -- finally did roll in, all we had to do was grab the baby and run up to the house, where we could shower and enjoy climate control while we slept soundly on our beds.

Southern Comfort

Sitting on my counter right now are two jalapenos, six yellow squash, one zucchini, and one tomato.

Sitting there the other day were three cucumbers and a fresh loaf of homemade, garden-sent zucchini bread.
As much as I'm hating the mosquitoes living off my ankle blood, the poison ivy trying to crawl through my front door, and the thick air that makes jeans feel like a modern form of torture, I am loving the sharing of the harvest that comes from the South.

Holy Freaking Boring

Wake up, sometime between 9:30am and 1pm.

Take care of responsibilities such as washing dishes, watering tomatoes, brushing teeth, checking email, looking for jobs, listing mini-fridge on Craigslist, etc.

Study fire fans and wish I had even a modicum of dancing intuition.

Make coffee.

Check TiVo suggestions.

Make a giant salad of mixed greens, a cut up tomato, and some intensely delicious salad dressing made by Annie, whoever she is.

Wait for Mack to wake up.

Kick laundry to the corner of the bedroom.

Feel concerned and impressed that we rarely ever have enough for a full load.

Check the mail.

Download podcasts.

Take a walk.

Research cameras, both SLRs and point and shoots.

Secretly wish for more money.

Make popcorn.

Feel annoyed that popcorn always burns in one spot in the middle.

Curse Orville Redenbacher.

Start making noise so Mack wakes up.

Save the lives of snails.

Sweep the porch.

Read Thomas Paine essays.

Have a glass of kefir.

Perform a frontal lobotomy.

Articles

When we moved from Kentucky to California, there were two collections I just could not bare to pare down.

My books and my artwork.

I don't own anything worth anything in the way of artwork, but I do have things that I love, things that hang on the wall and remind me of people I love, experiences I've had, places I've visited. Some of them are beautiful, some of them are scary, and some of them have penises. If you really want to get to know your guests quickly, hang a penis in your kitchen.

The most I've ever paid for a piece of artwork is $350, which I paid to the artist Bill Santen in three installments because I didn't (and still don't) have hundreds of dollars waiting to be plopped down on a piece of art. I like dingy art, stuff that is imperfect and dusty and could cut your fingers if not handled properly, and I prefer knowing the artist I buy art from -- maybe not personally but at least knowing something interesting about the person. All this is to say my art needs to have a soul behind it and not be more than my rent.

With the rebirth of DIY screenprinting and the launch of Etsy.com, affordable art is more accessible than it's ever been. And because it can be hard to choose art -- and because buyer's remorse can sting if you've paid a couple hundred bucks for a penis that you end up not really liking -- here are some places you can go to make that place over the mantle a little less Garden Ridge.

20X200 -- I just found out about this site, but I love it. Artist Jen Bekman is offering 200 pieces of art from different artists for $20. Every Tuesday and Wednesday a new piece is offered up. So you've got PostSecret on Monday, 20x200 on Tuesday and Wednesday, and now I just need some Thursday and Friday highlights.

Kids at Play, Dusk, Kashgar, by Raul Gutierrez

Cricket Press -- a husband and wife screenprinting enterprise in Lexington. I worked at the dollar movies with the wife, Sara, when she was in high school and she was basically who I wanted to be. We reconnected in photography at UK, where she'd evolved her awesomeness. I've bought prints from them for Jen and Betsy as gifts, and have a few of their originals in my own collection. If you live in Lexington and have seen really awesome band posters, these are probably the brains behind them.

The Red Dress, by Sara Turner

Decor8 Blog -- with the tagline "fresh finds for hip places," this blog is more like a Real Simple pleasure than an online art collective, but they do find some pretty amazing artwork sometimes that will definitely jazz up your pad. And be by relative unknowns with brilliance and a believable price tag. They also have Etsy Take 5 Tuesdays, where they turn you onto Etsy artists you are probably totally unaware of.

Carrousel by Irene Suchocki

UGallery -- when an art student graduates from college, where do they go? to work as bank tellers, nannies, junior editors. and that's just sad. At UGallery, you can shop for work by emerging artists, most of whom are recent college graduates, based on pricetag, color, or style. And if you find someone you like, you can actually follow their career, much like you would a band or actor or... your stocks.

Hundreds of Years Ago, By Maryam Gaber, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Miss Kitty Goes to Heaven

A little while before we moved to Kentucky, we were sort of forced to give Miss Kitty away to Mack's parents. We were pretty sure we were going to be moving, and the little old lady cat just refused to use her cat box. We needed time to air out the carpet before we gave up our apartment, and it seemed like every time I shampooed it, it would only be pee-free(ish) for 3 minutes before Kitty would christen it her toilet again.

I'm pretty sure I threatened to kill her a hundred times. Mack took her to the vet to see what was going on with her, why she wasn't using her box. Well, she had bowel loops, her kidneys were shriveled remnants of organs, her thyroid was a disaster and she didn't have that much longer to live. The vet clearly did not know of Miss Kitty's defiance.
When I first met Kitty, Mack and I had just started living together. He came back from a visit to his parents' house with this fluff ball with enormous chunks of matted hair, and suddenly we had a new pet. Kitty was a fine addition to our family, even if she was very clear about the fact the Mack was hers and I was number 2. She and Mack spent hours on the porch swing in the carport, she laying in his lap while he slowly clipped and pulled her mats out. I'd never seen a cat so calmly surrender to someone with barber shears before, but Kitty gave her life over to Mack and he delicately freed her from bad grooming. It was trust and tenderness all wrapped up in one unlikely little package. And I was jealous.
She was an old cat when I met her, probably 15 or more years old. Kitty chose Mack when she was younger, probably after she'd already had a litter of kittens or two in her life. He was camping in the backyard when up walks this puffy hunk of sass who decided to move in. His parents let him keep her.

She ended up being pregnant or getting pregnant -- I'm not sure of the details -- and when she gave birth, it really solidified her union to Mack. In the middle of the night, while he slept with her on his chest, she started to deliver her kittens. He says he woke up and froze, afraid to move and hurt her or her babies.

Every night when Mack and I would go to sleep, Kitty would assume her place, perched right on top of his chest, secure in his line of sight. And sometimes, just to really drive home her place in his life, she would lay between us, a 6 pound wall of fur that kept me away from her man.
When we took her to California with us, she rode in the cab of the pickup truck, most often on the center console next to her boyfriend. At night she would walk around on top of everybody and interrupt their sleep. Mack would put her in a little cat box when we stopped so she could do her business, but other than that, she was an amazingly good traveler. I was shocked at how well she did on that trip.
In Los Angeles, she settled right in. Aside from that one time she was arrested, she seemed beyond content with her life. She slept the necessary 20+ hours a day, liked potato chips, and demanded we rub her tits by plopping down on her side and rolling around.
She also liked to have her butt spanked and would often discuss the founder of the People's Republic of China with Mack. When I decided to put a bird feeder outside and attracted a family of cute little mice, Kitty used it as an opportunity to hone her hunting skills and wiped out the entire clan. We tried to make it so she didn't have to jump -- something she hated -- and Mack and she spent hours every day less than 2 feet from one another.
After she went to Mack's parents' house, she seemed to be doing well... not as well as she'd have done had she gone to live with Jen, but well enough. She liked being outside and got endless attention from the neighborhood kids and passersby in their apartment complex. Shahin fed her turkey and Tom gave her milk and that, combined with hundreds of pets a day, made her happy.

She was losing weight, but we knew she was old and sick and didn't have much time left. In fact, we'd been telling ourselves she didn't have that much time left for about 6 months (the vet had said she had a couple months max). When we knew for sure we were moving, we decided to leave her with his parents, unsure she'd survive the road trip a second time.

One day before we left Laila and I were coming home from a walk, and we saw Kitty on the porch. "What is she doing?" Laila asked, and seeing Kitty twisted around with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, I told Laila to go get Mack. I scooped her tiny body up in my arms and rubbed her dirty little nose, and by the time Mack got out, whatever was happening had stopped. She was shaking, disoriented, barely able to walk, but she was back. Her eyes were tired but she was behind them. Two days later, it was like nothing had ever happened. Leave it to Kitty to improve by having a stroke.

We left California a few days later, and knowing that would be the last time we saw Miss Kitty was rough. Mack did his usual hurry-through-goodbyes-so-they're-not-as-hard as we were heading out, but I picked her up, nuzzled her little face, came to peace with my biggest challenge for getting Mack's love and attention. I took her picture, and off we went.
Miss Kitty continued to deteriorate. On June 25, she was put down. She really was an angel of a cat.