This pet was supposed to make her last car trip to the vet this week. She’s eighteen years old for christ sakes, and meaner than a widowed, one eyed, overweight, misogynistic librarian supervising detention hall. She weights six pounds soaking wet, has a head the size of a golf ball, and falls asleep without warning while standing up.

She’s the first cat I rescued. Itchy. I chose her because she was the only cat at the shelter that hissed at me when I approached her cage. I told my father that I was afraid she was too mean to find a home, and she needed me more than the others did. Together, we were Hell on Wheels for seven years. My mom decided Itchy would be better off remaining with her when I got my first apartment after college. It didn’t seem right to confine her indoors when she had always had the option of outdoor living.

When I returned to my Mom’s, Itchy always remembered and acknowledged me by placing a paw against my cheek. In the hormonal turmoil that defines the transition from adolescence to adulthood, we were mates. We shared stubbornness, feistiness, head rubs, and ice cream. She’s lived a long healthy life, and she refuses to let go without a fight. She has congenital heart failure, and we agree we don’t want her to suffer… She is too fuckin’ mean to die on her own. I’ve been coming to terms with the inevitable for the past month and I’m okay with it, because it’s about doing what is best for her. She isn’t ready yet and still has much fight left.

This pet was only eight. Lucy became a member of my mother’s household because my mother has sucker stamped on her forehead. My mother gave her a home because a neighbor needed a favor. My mother has kept cats, fish, bunnies, and dogs, but she favors cats. Dogs have always held an ornamental status in her household. They were always well fed, and their health issues were attended, but they never received enough of the personalized attention dogs need and crave.

Lucy was different. She inserted herself into my mother’s life and refused to be ignored. She was a collie mix, a working dog, and she needed a job. Undeterred by the absence of livestock, Lucy herded my mother’s cats. All five of them. When my mother would pull into the driveway, Lucy would round up all the cats who were outdoors and drive them into the house. When Lucy tried to playing with the cats they hissed, slapped, or snubbed her. Not one to accept defeat, Lucy adopted her very own kitten to raise.

This is Linus. Notice the resemblance? No one seems to know where Linus came from, but Lucy raised him as if he were her own. the family has always been impressed the dog selected a kitten with markings similar to her own. They were often spotted curled up together on the porch. When Linus unwillingly donated his nads to science, Lucy comforted him and nursed him back to health.

After the kitten was raised, Lucy turned her attention to my mother. After my mother fell off a stepladder trimming hedges, Lucy refused to leave her side. Lucy considered my mother to be her responsibility. From that day onward, Lucy seldom left my mother’s side. Lucy transitioned from yard dog to house dog. In the early phase she was quarantined to her dog bed in the kitchen, later she had the run of the house and guarded my mother’s bed at night.

A week ago, Lucy had a seizure. She was taken to the veterinarian’s office and my mother received instructions from the vet. They took a Let’s wait and see approach. A few days later the dog had another seizure and she had difficulty coming out of it. She was taken back to the vet and kept for observation. After the vet ran some tests, he sent the dog home again with prescriptions for phenobarbital and valium.

Lucy never really awoke from the stupor after that. Her eyes were dilated, she was lethargic. Linus came and laid with her. She had three more seizures, and lost control of bowels. My sister maid plans to take the dog to the vet the for the final time the following morning. My sister miraculously talked my mother into staying home while she had the dog. My mom had already seen the dog at her worst, there was no reason to be present for the needle.

Lucy had suffered from brain damage. Her mouth was dry, and her eyes unfocused. My sister was upset that the vet allowed the dog to return home. My mother is a petite disabled woman. She might have been a lion tamer in her youth, but she no longer has the strength to wrangle a seventy-five pound dog. Of all the trials and tribulations my mother should endure in her life, I would have preferred she not have to deal with this one.

This dog was supposed to be here to keep my mother company. This dog was needed to be a good listener, because I know my mother talks to her non-stop during waking hours. This dog was supposed to be present for all successive family gatherings so we would someone to blame for the unfortunate toxic side effects of my sister’s broccoli casserole. This dog was supposed to be here, because my mom needs her.

It started off as one of THOSE days. He slept late which was fine, but after waking he concluded we didn’t have enough time to review paint swatches and leave in time to get breakfast before his appointment. Reluctantly, I forfeited printing out my crossword puzzle, and snatched my mediocre novel from the night stand so we could grab breakfast at a diner before waiting at the chiropractor’s office.

We’ve been trying to consolidate trips across town. It isn’t that we can’t afford the gas. We can. The rising gas prices have had little relative impact on our budget when compared to other families. I’m also aware how lucky we are to live in the U.S. when you compare the fuel costs to European nations. Basically, its the principle of the whole thing. It pisses me off that fuel costs have increased so much. I guess I’m one of a few who is actually miffed enough to change the way I drive. The Mister and I carpool and consolidate trips when possible, but running late this morning put a kink in the best laid plans.

I put the frustration behind me, and the remaining morning was pleasant. After the appointment, we returned home for lunch and to deposit heat sensitive purchases. Lunch was a minor culinary disaster which has resulted in my refusal to eat broiled flounder until after Don Isthmus is nominated for a Nobel Peace prize (Yes, that bad.) When the phone rang I glanced at the caller ID and passed the phone to the Mister. It’s HER. I listened to his side of the conversation as they exchanged pleasantries and irrelevant information about HER upcoming vacation. Finally they got to the real dirt. After he finished the conversation, the Mister filled in the blanks for my benefit.

As per the usual way the conversations have gone with HER recently, I was disgusted, quiet and sullen. He said a few things, and I said a few things. After thinking about a little longer, I told him, “I don’t care for the way she conducts business.” As this type of thing can be easily misinterpreted and blown out of proportion, I made it a point to tell him I was disgusted with the situation and I wasn’t blaming him, I just wasn’t happy about the way things were progressing (or not progressing as the case were), and that was all I was going to say about it, though i intended to fume a little longer.

Empty complaints launched into thin air don’t make me feel better about conflicts. What does it prove with the exception of establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt that some soulless human anomaly has delighted in shitting in my corn flakes. I informed him that I would be quietly seething for the rest of the afternoon, but it wasn’t personal. Being quiet is easy, but being detached when scorned, not so much.

We left made three attempts to leave the house and tend to remaining errands, but seemed unable to pull out of the driveway without first: peeing, making one more phone call, picking up cat food off the floor, checking paint chips, finding the grocery list, getting a bottle of water, and running back in the house for car keys, while simultaneously having an energetic phone conversation with my mother about her dog’s valium prescription.

We stopped at the animal hospital to pick up prescription cat food they ordered for us. After limping to the car sans an arm and a leg with a twenty pound bag of kibble, the Mister was irked.

On the way down the mountain, the He started grumbling about tailgaters, potholes, whether his suv is large enough to accommodate a queen sized matures. Next it was the traffic, the location of the speed limit signs, and finally the inconvenient location of St*rbucks.

After noting the difficulty of entry he decided we should get coffee before continuing. As he pulled into a parking spot, a pedestrian stepped off the curb and stood in the center of the parking place for a moment before walking to his car. The Mister was still grumbling when we went in side.

I turned to the Mister, and said, “SHE did an excellent of wrecking our moods.”

This brought a smile to his face and we exchanged high-fives. It’s reassuring to know it’s possible to be angry and still be on the same team.

Joy is fickle. Sometimes I feel it upon arrival, others departure. When I pulled out of the driveway of the old house with a weeks worth of clothes, a pair of stoned house cats, and a corkscrew, I didn’t feel much of anything. There was no fanfare, only the Mister and I pulling away in an anemic two car convoy. I was apprehensive about being trapped in a stick shift with two screaming cats for six hours, but I didn’t depart with any regret about the life I was leaving behind.

When we arrived at our new home, I don’t remember feeling joy or excitement. I was relieved to get the cats out of a moving car, looking forward to a righteous whiz, and thought about the Mexican restaurant for dinner. The moment was ordinary, with the exception of making a dozen trips to unload vehicles. It was the unremarkable nature of the moment that made it feel like home. An intangible feeling not so much of purpose but of expectation. It was a you are home so this what you do moment. I never questioned whether the occasion merited joy or a celebratory champagne toast before sleeping on the floor.

After unpacking, Maggie asked if it felt like home, yet. It always felt like home. It felt whole during the three days before our furniture arrived. It felt whole when there were several tons of boxes stacked in the center of the living room. It felt whole before I picked out paint colors and made met the plumber.

Even with warmth of satiation, there was one refugee aspect of our lives in place. Until last week. The window treatments. I don’t give much thought to dressing myself, so windows are completely out of my league. Most of the windows had a modicum of privacy in place, though some barriers were more tasteless than others. The studio was clad in mini-blinds, there were paper shades tacked up in the master sitting room, the bedroom and bath had naked windows.

We moved paper shades to the bathroom, stretched fitted sheets over the windows in the bedroom, and propped an inflated air mattress in front of the windows in the sitting room. As a woman of more practicality than decoration senses, these solutions seemed perfectly amiable to me. Except for maybe one.

The paper shades in the shower held in place by thumbtacks were not confidence builders. I’ve been suffering from low level shower anxiety. My fears are less serious than this. I have no reservations about nudity, but I don’t consider myself much of an exhibitionist. The Mister likes to watch, and I’m perfectly okay with it because it leads to multiple okays later. The cats however are making me feel a little self-conscious. They don’t just watch. They gawk. How do I really know they aren’t posting photos to flickr, or worse, rating my performance?

This interest in watching me shower happened before our move. First, it was one cat. I felt like a curiosity. Later, the Mister and I contemplated adopting a pair of brothers from the humane society and were discussing the practicality of squaring the cat population. One morning, I stepped out of the shower to two pairs of eyes trained on me, and I concluded I couldn’t handle four cats in the house, it would be too unnerving. WHat if watching me bath simply wasn’t enough? What if they expected me to sing too? Have you dealt with removing cat hair from wet legs? I tried closing the bathroom door, but the damage inflicted by two heavy cats hurling themselves over and over at the door, left one the impression of showering in the center of a demolition site.

Later, I made contact arrangements with our real estate agent regarding house showings. She asked if it was okay to show the house if no one answered the phone, and I replied as long they left a message on the answering machine. I told I didn’t want to be featured in the shower during a surprise house showing. She gave a knowing nod and said, yeah that’s happened a few times. No shit! having spent a week looking at property and observing my own agent’s lackadaisical approach to entering stranger’s homes, I knew there was an EXCELLENT chance. Frankly, I doubt prospective buyers could be coaxed into making an offer after observing three pussies huddled around a shower. I’m afraid the south is too conservative for that to be much of a selling point for anyone older than the frat house set…Sure they continue to fantasize, but denial is often accompanied by a well appointed Gucci handbag fashioned from a married man’s scrotum.

For two months I showered in the bathroom with the flimsy paper shades tacked to the molding knowing that at any moment, Patches could tire of watching me shower through the large picture window, and rip the paper shade down to watch the birds singing beyond the bathroom window. In his exuberance to commune with nature, he would gladly leave me bare-assed for the benefit of my neighbors and the postman.

Thanks to the Mister’s good taste in window treatments, half of my anxiety has been treated. No more worries about exposing myself to the neighbors. The cats have insisted that the shower show must go on, so look for tickets at a box office near you.

The lovely expatriate Diane Mandy inquired about the pause in the last post to stop and smell the roses catch the goldfish. The goldfish were my consolation prize after arguing with the Mister. I didn’t win the fight, but the Mister thought I deserved a reward for my persistence so he opted to correct the wrong problem*. Enough about the why and onward to the how…

When I say goldfish, I mean these not these. Not that these aren’t worth coveting, but they don’t require six hours in a car, a pond in a box, and suicide prevention counseling.

The goldfish in question were residing six hours away, at our old house, in our old pond. In order for them to be transferred to our new abode provisions had to be made. Like most really big decisions the Mister has to make this one had a small window of opportunity to execute. Two days to be exact. After online estimates ruled out indoor aquariums, the Mister opted for an exterior pond kit. Pond in a cardboard container as it is unaffectionately referred to in this house. The kit included a liner, lighting, pump, three different nozzles, and uninspiring installation instructions.

We returned home with the kit and the Mister and I took turns digging a two-hundred and forty gallon hole on the front lawn. (Actually lawn is probably too generous a word, but at least it is green.). The kit was a low cost affair one quarter the size of our first pond. We stopped working at sundown with the intentions of finishing the following day, but like all the best laid plans…

The Mister awoke the next morning with one those 24 hour stomach things. He spent most of his day alternating between riding the porcelain bus and sleeping on the sofa next to the trash can. I spent most of the day making gatorade runs and cloaking myself in a ring of lysol. So, yeah, there was just an empty hole in the front yard.

I set the pump up on the deck in a large bucket to use as a temporary tank until the installation could be completed. We were behind schedule, but at least there was a back-up plan.

The Mister was feeling better the following morning and we were able to drive down for his son’s wedding. Since departure arrangements were made in haste, he left an item of great importance behind. His suit. The suit that was purchased for the sole purchase of watching his son be united in holy matrimony. So we backtracked an hour and a half from home and added three hours to our drive south. So much or achieving fuel economy by carpooling..

The following day we set about the business of catching fish to be transported to my sister’s, where I spent the weekend. These fish are friendly enough to eat from your hand, well my hand, but the moment you introduce a net to their sanctuary…The backyard fishpond might as well have contained enough water to fill the ocean. Those fish made me feel like an uncoordinated ass with a net. Two hours later with the pond half-drained, we captured eight and I moved them to a small holding pond at my sister’s until migration day.

One koi had issues. Yes, had being past tense since he is no longer present. The holding pond was too confining, and he couldn’t cope with the claustrophobia. He jumped out and spent his remaining life flopping in a fire ant bed. By the time he was discovered, it was too late. We regrouped resources and covered the holding pond screen until departure. When I told the Mister about the casualty, he replied if we had only left him in the pond he would still be alive. True, but I wasn’t the one who insisted on moving the damn fish.

Bagged and oxygenated the remaining fish were placed in a bin to ride north. After dropping the Mister at the airport, I took the fish home and settled them in their temporary digs on the deck.

The following day, I set about the business of finishing the pond installation. Apparently, I am a champ at digging figurative holes, but I totally suck at digging literal ones. I tried fitting the liner to the liner but the hole was too small. I made it bigger. Then it was too too wide. I tried back filling and made the hole too small again. Then too deep, then too shallow. By the end of the day I was prepared to let the fish spend eternity in a wading pool with yellow ducks silk screened on the bottom.

The next day was marginally better. I finally installed the liner, much to the amusement of the UPS guy who showed up when I was up to my thighs in water and potty talk. I stepped back to critique my handiwork and realized I would need to engage in more reverse engineering if the pond was to resemble anything other than an afterthought. Armed with a level and a shovel I created a berm along the edge to prevent runoff from flowing into the pond.

The last step was to remove random stepping stones from the path leading from the parking path to the front door. Charming as stepping stones are, if not installed level, they will make it easier for you or the Fed Ex guy to break an ankle while walking to the front door.

The Mister asked how construction was progressing. I replied it looked exactly like a pond that was sold in a cardboard box. It would look fine in someone else’s yard, but I had higher expectations of my own abilities. It doesn’t look natural and the landscaping is lacking. But honestly, how natural can one expect a koi pond to look in the fucking mountains of Tennessee?

The fish are settled in their new watering hole and it only took about a hundred and fifty dollars worth of provisions to transport and relocate the little bastards. Now, I hope the savvy urban raccoon population doesn’t turn our water feature into a sushi bar.

If this had actually been easy, it wouldn’t have seemed like my life.

*I’ve tried to finish this post for four fuckin’ days. I can’t go into details about the disagreement in fewer than twelve hundred words, and still be fair to the Mister. Ironic, because the argument took less than a minute.

The moving process did not disappoint. It was filled with all the stress, frustration, swearing and unpredictability you warned me about.Through it all, I managed to keep my cool, except for one that one time when I chewed the Mister’s ass and served it to him on a plate. Only once. I refuse to apologize because It would be insincere.

The Mister hovers. I don’t need a supervisor. I packed 80% of the boxes without incident. I don’t appreciate him looking over my shoulder offering constructive criticism when he can’t keep track of a tape gun, much less be bothered to reserve enough underwear to survive the move. We sacrificed one ugly Christmas mug to my inferior packing techniques. Not bad for 350+ miles towed behind a semi.

Knowing stress was inevitable made it easier to prepare emotionally. I wish I were better about being zen under ordinary circumstances. I knew we hadn’t completed enough preparatory packing before the trailer arrived. I knew the Mister would take more time to load the truck than he anticipated. His estimates are only reliable if things go perfectly. This was far from perfect. A former work acquaintance of mine once remarked, you can’t derail a disaster from its natural course. So I practiced breathing while the mini-dramas unfolded.

What the Mister lacks in planning and preparation, he makes up for during the scramble. He struggles with deadlines, but he can pack a truck better than the Joad family can load wagon. I am still in awe at how much he loaded in the final three feet of the trailer. Did I mention he did it with a broken toe? My hero.

Our hired loaders were moonlighting from their day jobs. Instead of sixteen hours of manual labor, we netted four. It wasn’t wasn’t part of the agreement. There isn’t much you can do when you find out on the day you need them, they will be seven hours late. Well, there is one one thing….you start drinking apple schnapps at 9AM. It took an extra day to load the truck. One of these eager beavers might have strong-armed the shut-off valve for the washing machine resulting in a mini-flood and an emergency call to the plumber. Good times.

We doped up the kitties for what turned into a six and half hour tandem car trip. (Gotta luv traffic in the ATL). I drew the short straw I chauffeured the cats in a stick shift and the Mister packed his vehicle to its cargo limit. It was like unloading a clown car. I still can’t believe he hauled the flammables, the vacuum cleaner, the air mattress, the liquor stash, clothes, walking sticks, bed linens, cat litter, art, ironing board, coffee maker, corkscrew, pillows, computer bags and a bunch of shit I can’t be bothered to recall.

We spent three days waiting for our furniture. It was refreshing. After being surrounded by things, I felt free in the wide open space not yet influenced by our lives. I remember when my youth held that much potential. Maybe it will again.

The last major snag occurred when the driver delivered our trailer. Seems there was a problem with parking. The property has two drives, both of which slope downhill and require setting your emergency brake. We had permission to park the trailer on the street, but the driver didn’t want to be responsible. After we determined the driveway slope allowed minimal room for the trailer, we discovered the phone and cable lines were too low to accommodate the trailer height. We called the city, but it wasn’t their responcibility. The driver suggested we wedge a board under the lines to raise them, rather than waiting for professionals. I found a fallen hickory tree in the back yard with a “y” at the top. Propped on a pair of bricks it raised the cables just high enough to allow the trailer to pass. So the lines remained propped for two days.

Sometimes it pays to be self-reliant.