So close I can taste it

The cat room transition is almost complete. Yesterday I painted baseboards, then once they were thoroughly painted, I nailed ’em up. The only thing left is doing the final cut of the carpet and installing the transitions.

Oh, and everything else we can think of.

This morning, Branden suggested maybe sealing around the bottom of the baseboards with silicone. Normally, of course, that would be ludicrous, but since this is a room in which kittens are being potty-trained, and we installed vinyl flooring exactly because we wanted a non-absorptive surface: making it impossible for… undesirable substances… to get under the baseboards and subsequently under the floor“boards” is probably a good idea.

Oh, and Branden wants a new bookshelf. Oh, and I want to make a bookshelf cause I’m sorta over the $35 Target bookshelf lifestyle. So. You know. This project will be over never ever.

I want to have a bookshelf whose bottom shelf is actually a kitten habitat. A bed, a scratching surface, an agility playground… I would love that.

I really want to get the endless crap that is currently in our office, hallway, and bedroom back into the cat room where it belongs. On the other hand, why not do all these projects? Sounds fun to me. I haven’t had so much energy in a really, really long time. I’ve been super productive this whole week, and efficient, and organized. I almost feel like a real human being! I want to keep up the tidal wave of awesome, and why shouldn’t I? Maybe my real calling is craftsmanship.

We are coming up on the MuckFest so dang fast, now. Please consider donating to my team! Every dollar helps get us one step closer to a world free of MS. Plus, you’re helping me earn a warm shower on the day of the event. You don’t want me to freeze my fingers off, do you? I didn’t think so.

•••Hey, did you know? I’m fostering kittens! Come follow my tribulations on my kitten blog! Paw-Purr-azzi•••

Home Improvement

It’s summertime, and I’ve got the bug.

Last winter, a picket fell off our fence. The wood was too rotten to hold nails anymore. Branden and I couldn’t adult our way through it at the time, so we just let the picket lie on the ground near the fence, whose gate was no longer secured and was now swaying in the breeze. Until, that is, our neighbor came over and screwed the picket back onto the fence, presumably because he was ashamed to be associated with such a pathetic structure so near his property.

After that, Branden and I realized that we couldn’t ignore it; we actually had a responsibility to our neighbors to keep the fence to at least the bare minimum of presentability.

But… it was also winter. So we resolved to deal with it once the weather improved.

Winter was extremely weird this year. We had winter-storm-warning-level snow storms all the way through May, then all of a sudden it was in the 80s (if not higher) every day. So, spring sorta rushed by, and then it was summer, and I said—Now! It must be now! before it gets more hot, before all the rest of the pickets fall off. We must take care of it!

Luckily, the pressure-treated posts and cross-bars of the fence are still in relatively good condition. (Not perfect, but they’ll last another five years, easy.) So we decided to do a 75%-assed job and only replace the pickets. My family all flash-mobbed my house over a weekend and got the pickets put up, lickety-split. Branden and I painted the whole arrangement with linseed oil over the remainder of that weekend and the following weekend, and I’m so proud of the result. It looks great.

But it may have created a monster.

After that, Branden and I agreed that it would be way smarter if our cat room had some kind of hard floor, instead of the carpet that was in there at the time. We were trying to keep it “clean” by putting down painting drop cloths when we had kittens, but here, “clean” is a comparative term. It was way, way too much trouble. So we agreed to lay down a floating vinyl floor… ourselves.

Well, we tackled that project this last weekend. I can’t believe how much we got done. We pried off the baseboards. We pulled up the carpet, carpet pad, tack strips, staples, the whole shebang. We bought paint and painted the room. We bought new baseboards. And finally, we laid down the floor. (Check out the kitten blog below for more pictures.)

We still have to put the light switch and outlet faceplates back on. We still have to put down transitions between the carpet and the vinyl. We still have to put up the baseboards. And, of course, we still have to move everything back into the room. But I am so happy with everything, so far. It looks so great, and I can’t wait for it to be done!

This may or may not be obvious to you, but I haven’t been writing much recently. I’m making myself be okay with that. I want to pursue other creative endeavors for the moment, and as long as I’m not being a human slug, I think that’s probably okay. Plus, once Becky’s all moved in, we will surely resume our weekly writing dates, which will get my writing back on track.

Thanks for hanging in there, friends and fans! Until Wednesday!

•••Hey, did you know? I’m fostering kittens! Come follow my tribulations on my kitten blog! Paw-Purr-azzi•••

Appendectomy!

Last weekend was awesome. Branden's boss gave everyone Friday off, and at the end of Friday I was sure that it was Saturday—not because of losing track of days, but because it seemed like we'd spent two days doing… whatever. I don't actually remember, specifically, but I remember feeling awesome about it.

Saturday was equally awesome. We got shit done and had some fun and wooo! we were killing this weekend! It almost felt like a vacation. The only bad thing was that, sometime in the evening on Saturday, Branden started having some pain in his stomach; just a little discomfort, no big deal.

But in the morning on Sunday, the pain was still there. It had caused him discomfort throughout the night. We decided he should probably go to the doctor.

It being Sunday, our only real option was Urgent Care if we didn't want to go straight to the ER (and we didn't). Our desires were irrelevant! The urgent care people decided it was either a kidney stone or appendicitis, and either way they weren't equipped to treat it. They sent us to the emergency room.

There is an emergency room just down the street from us. I believe it's fairly new—they still have a banner on the building saying “24-Hour ER Now Open”. I had to go there on Wednesday night at 11pm, and it was completely empty, which is how I knew I'd taken an ambulance straight into… the Twilight Zone (I didn't take an ambulance. I just couldn't think of anything else that would be appropriately pithy). I chalked it up to luck and good timing, but I wasn't looking forward to this visit. I'm familiar with the zoo of human misery that is most emergency rooms; the uncomfortable chairs, the lack of electrical outlets, the lack of food, and the interminable, interminable waiting. But when we walked into the ER, it was empty, again. I wonder if Westminster just doesn't know it's there? So bizarre. But I'll take it!

Branden saw the same doctor I'd seen on Wednesday night (also Twilight Zone-y), had some scans done, donated more bodily fluids, and was quickly diagnosed—his appendix was enlarged by 14mm, which is considerable for such a shrimpy limp-balloon of an “organ.” But apparently the ER was not part of a larger, more general hospital, and we had to go to yet another campus for the procedure.

The nurses got the transfer all set up so that the hospital would be expecting us, and we went home and packed a bag. We knew what to expect; we were old-hat at this after my 2009 appendectomy. We got to the hospital at just about noon.

It was still Sunday (what?!) and there was only one surgical team on staff, and they were in camera when we arrived, so they got us all set up in Branden's room for the wait. I'd let Carlie know that we were at a hospital in her neck of the woods, so she, Dan and their brood Eleanor and Wes came and kept us company; Fletcher showed up shortly before they took Branden down for surgery at 3.

At 3 they started him on antibiotics, which the nurse had said they wanted to get started ½ hour before the procedure, so I anticipated that the surgery wouldn't start till 3:30. My parents finally arrived and the Branden Fan Club hung out in the surgery waiting room for… approximately three years.

All things considered, it went much better than it had any right to. There were no meltdowns, either on the part of myself or the children. The Amazing Indestructible Fletcher chased Eleanor around almost the entire time (and I mean chased. Running, running, running). My dad went on a long and fruitless mission to find the TV remote so he could watch golf. (He and my mom had already had a long, exhausting and somewhat frustrating Father's Day, and this was just helping make it more awesome. I'm sure after the fact it felt like the lamest nightmare ever.) Eventually they went to a grocery store for the universal cure for everything: love-food (in this case, smoothie supplies) and were still on that errand when Branden woke up from anesthesia and we all moved back up to the room.

Well, the surgery was successful and Branden did great. Everyone kept telling him how good he looked, even though to me he looked decidedly yellow. Carlie, Dan & co went home not too much later. My parents dropped off their booty and gave Branden some love, then they, too, went home, and it was the Three Musketeers (Branden, Fletcher and myself) until they finally discharged Branden at 9pm. (Which, hooray! I definitely thought that we were going to have to stay the night.) Then Fletch went home and Branden and I had to go to the only 24-hour pharmacy in the area to get Branden's pain pills (he had to be there for controlled substance scrip), then the grocery store because the birthday boy (did I mention that?) wanted ice cream. Then we were able to go home.

Tl;dr: Our awesome weekend got longer! B's been home since then, recovering diligently. He'll probably head back to work tomorrow, but these three extra days have been so great. And it felt like an adventure in grown-up-ness. Now I just get to look forward to the bill. (Yay insurance!)

•••Hey, did you know? I’m fostering kittens! Come follow my tribulations on my kitten blog! Paw-Purr-azzi•••

Back on the horse

Today, like most days, I’m finding it hard to get going with my writing.

I got up at 5:30 this morning, dragged Branden out of bed, and hit the gym. We got home and cleaned up by 8 or so, then hit Starbucks before he had to go to work. I considered bringing my laptop with me to sit and work on writing after he left, but I thought the better of it since I still need to finish my corkboard. I figured, with such an early and productive start, surely writing will just fall into place! …Right?

I wish motivation worked that way. I went home for breakfast and checked my feeds while I nommed down some cereal. Feeds, of course, take much longer than cereal (damn you, Tumblr!) and I fell down the Facebook hole for a while too, so now… at 12:25… I’m writing my blog post.

And I still haven’t worked on my story.

When I got back to Denver on Saturday, Branden picked me up from the airport and we went straight to a writing date with our friend and writing-group companion, Bridget. I was nervous about doing this because I was still feeling very overwhelmed with the idea of starting actually writing. I keep thinking up apt similes to describe my feelings regarding my story right now. Here’s my current favorite:

Right now, my story is like a bunch of limes I’m trying to hold. If I try to organize them or move them around, I’m likely to drop them all. Branden (pictured to the right expertly holding all the limes) explained to me that if I don’t put all the limes down, preferably onto a piece of paper, some of them were likely to sneak away. (Sneaky, sneaky limes!) This is true, and I know it, but superstition tends to win. Fear tends to win.

So on Saturday, pinned in the Denver Cat Co with nothing to do but write, I tried putting some limes down.

I ended up putting down 3,250 limes.

And none of them broke or snuck away.

I have many more limes that need to be placed, and some of them are a lot bigger than any of the limes I put down on Saturday; in fact, bigger than all of those limes put together.

Starting the process, and seeing that the whole thing didn’t go up in smoke, helped me unclog my creative pipes to the point where I’m looking forward to making my note cards again. I had sorta lost track of their purpose and I felt really lost when I’d look at them, like, “what were those for again?” I was considering writing irrelevant things down, then I’d check myself and say, “…what? Why is that a thing that needs to go on my board? Where would it even go?” and then I’d stare at the note cards some more, feeling somewhat hopeless. But now I feel like I’ve got it figured out: what they were for, and how they can help. And I’ve got some (many, lots) cards to fill out before I write much more than I already have.

I’ve said it before, but I’m saying it again anyway: this revision of the story is going to be a lot more like a new first draft than a second draft. Five of the characters are still here, with the same names and approximately the same roles, but not a single word from my first go-around will survive, and some of these characters who survived are going to be drastically different. I’d like them to be complex, fully actualized characters, and to do that it’s important that I have who they are written down. It’ll help to have why they are who they are written down, too. And why they have the relationship to the MC that they do.

But, some of that isn’t cork-board material. It won’t be a thing I’ll want to (or be able to) look over at and, in a glance, get an answer to a question. That is what I envision my corkboard being for. If it gets too cluttered, it defeats its own purpose.

I think I’d also like to write a summary, a “what God knows” sort of chronological list of events just so I can keep it all straight. It seems like it’d be hard, but considering that I’m following one main character, the chronology can’t criss-cross too much. That’s the thing that always seems daunting about a summary: “if I mention this thing, then I have to ‘go back in time’ and mention this thing, which happened because of this thing…” and if you have multiple main characters, multiple things can be happening concurrently. Of course, in that instance, chronology is probably even more important, to make sure something that causes something else doesn’t happen after that thing… anyway, I’m getting long-winded.

My trip to Durango went very well. Spending time with my dad was so great. It seems like it’s been years since we had quality just-me-and-him time, and it reminded me why my dad is the best dad ever. It was quick and low-key, just how I like trips home. It’s a little bit weird to know that the vast, vast majority of my friends no longer live in Durango. In fact, I can only think of one who’s still there.

I remembered why being so social was easy when I lived there: anywhere you wanted to be, including each others’ houses, was ten minutes or less from wherever you are, with no interstate between you and them. When I go there, it’s a lot like being a high schooler again—no responsibilities and nothing to do but hang out with friends… so it’s no fun without friends. Wah.

Oh well. Such is life.

Any revision techniques that you favor? Let me know in comments!

Today's adults were NOT yesterday's kids... WTF???

This is outrageous.

I don't understand the movement towards installing your children in figurative plastic bubbles to protect them from the world. I mean, I would understand actual plastic bubbles—that actually offers real, physical protection. But... disallowing trick-or-treating? Banning books? Particularly the dictionary?! It's the same concept as banning guns—pretty soon, the only people who have books are the ones with all the power over the children.

I mean... if removing a child's access to words removed the things those words meant (ie, if you don't know the words "oral sex," then oral sex doesn't exist), then I could see some limited advantage to banning books. (But really, we shouldn't be removing oral sex from people's lives. Why would you?!) But this particular censorship technique results in the kids who don't have dictionaries or internet access or horrible-but-kind older siblings at home don't know what the phrase "oral sex" means... but that doesn't stop more informed (or pervy) peers from trying to take advantage of them and get them to put their mouths on the peers' genitals.

Anyone who watches action or mystery movies knows that knowledge is power. Similarly, ignorance is weakness. If a person knows what oral sex is, then a peer seeking to take advantage of them can't tell them it's something different, like a game, an experiment, or a joke. (See Competence: Law & Order SVU episode.) To be educated & informed is not to automatically be tainted or impure; it simply helps to prevent 1) miscommunications 2) looking (and being) completely ignorant 3) and people taking advantage of your ignorance.

I remember being younger (I don't remember what age I was, unfortunately)—my family had an unabridged dictionary. I spent lots of happy minutes (I was a kid, I didn't have that much attention span) looking up dirty words and stuff before realizing that I was having fun looking stuff up in the dictionary. Some amount of time after that, I hear the phrase "chicken hawk" on SNL, and had to know what it meant. So... I looked it up in my unabridged dictionary. And I learned what it was (slang-wise... I already knew about the bird). And I went "oh, huh, I feel informed now." It didn't immediately make me want to be (or be a victim to) an older gay man. Similarly, despite the positive slant the book Where Did I Come From puts on sex, having it read to me as a little kid didn't make me immediately want to go have sex.

Banning all things that make some reference to "intimate parts" or sexuality is simply unrealistic and, in the end, very harmful to learning children. For example, I have several or many friends whose first porn was National Geographic. That's obviously not the recommended use for National Geographic... but man. Horny pubescent kids will turn ANYTHING into porn. Don't victimize the good stuff because of it! Damn people.

New phase of life

Okay, it seems like it's been forever since I had a real, live update. Even the one in February doesn't count. So, here's another life update for the morbidly curious.

I've been on Tysabri for 6 months now, and I've had nothing but good experiences with it—medically, that is. Every single month is an adventure in pincushionhood, on the other hand. But what can you do? It's like one of those silly stupid hypothetical half-drunk questions: "would you rather suffer more MS symptoms ... or get poked with needles for hours, one day a month??" I guess I've learned the answer to that one.

Other things in my life have been greatly affected by my choice in medication. For one, it causes birth defects, so I can't decide to try to have kids until after I'm off it—if I was planning on trying anyway—which, shockingly, scarily, and horrifyingly enough, it seems I may be.

My mother has also wanted to be present for my infusions every month. This hasn't always been possible, but when it is, I absolutely hate it. She gets far more upset about bad pokes than I do, behaves embarrassingly (ie, acting out her parade stories as she's telling them to me... in the infusion room), and, most frustratingly of all, answers questions that nurses ask ME.

(Days Later) Whatever. Moving on.

Branden and I celebrated our 2-year anniversary a bit ago, the last weekend of May. It was very relaxing, romantic, and awesome. On the way home from Denver, we got a call from Branden's mom telling him that his brother Aaron had been sending her disturbing text messages about how she was going to lose a son, and other suicide-sounding messages. Now, Aaron had just spent a week or two down in Pagosa with her, attempting to work for her boyfriend's raft service. He had to go back up to Fort Collins for a parole meeting. On his way up there, his motorcycle broke down. So, he missed his meeting and was stranded in Fort Collins with no money and no place to stay. He had a sort-of girlfriend and his (and Branden's) brother Griffin up there, but for one reason and another he couldn't stay with either of them. Cutting out the details and intervening events, we got ahold of Aaron and offered to fix his bike for him if he would bring it down to Boulder and take it to a mechanic's.

The saga of the motorcycle is long and convoluted, but that isn't the important part of the story, so I'm going to condense it down: we got the motorcycle fixed, a couple of days later it caught on fire while he was driving so he parked it somewhere "temporarily." Then he finds out from the person who actually owns the bike that he is going to report it stolen to get out of paying it off, etc. So, the bike is gone and honestly, I'm relieved.

So, come to find out, Aaron's stay with Deb turned out about as well as his entire childhood with Deb... which is to say, not very well. So he decided not to go back to Pagosa. We offered him room on our couch while he found a job and saved up enough money to get his own place. So, he's been living with us since May 31.

A week or two later, Griffin came down and also started sleeping on our floor, looking for a job.

Condensing again: They're both gainfully employed now, saving money to get their own apartment together in the Boulder area. They both feel like they're getting a new start to life and that the situation in Fort Collins was terribly toxic. It seems that Aaron may actually be getting free of the witch. And, all is good in Conley boys land.

Branden and I lived in the Habitat apartment with them until June 23rd, when we got the keys to our new apartment in the Horizons, where I work. However, ON the 23rd, the day we were supposed to start painting and moving, I woke up with a terrible stomach ache. Branden took me to the hospital, and 12 hours later, they took out my appendix. It basically decommissioned me for the ENTIRE MOVE. This would have been great except that, of course, I spent the whole time feeling frustrated and guilty that I wasn't helping more. I'm still not supposed to lift more than 25-30 pounds for another week or so.

But, we got moved (mostly). We have a few more carloads, and our house is quickly filling up (yikes!), but it looks great. We're starting to feel like real grown-ups, and I don't know how I feel about that. But, it does feel nice to not live in chaos anymore. The Habitat apartment is Griffin and Aaron's until August 9th or so, when they have to be moving into their own place so that we can start cleaning and getting it in order for move-out.

We lived at Habitat for 4 years, so this transition is quite a shock for me. I had forgotten how to move, which seems to be mostly okay because I think I've broken some of the more horrible habits I have about it. I'm going to miss it, but the new place really is vastly more awesome, with better amenities and the whole bit.

Also, my whole repertoire of friends is moving up here. Dan and Carlie and Chris Rossi are already here, Joe and Sarah are moving in this weekend, Steph and Ian will be moving here in August (probably), and there may be a slow trickle of other friends, depending on how taken they are with the place when they come to visit. Shad won't be joining us, unfortunately. That actually makes me sad because we used to hang out a lot, now we probably won't anymore.

I'm not a total convert to the area. I hate Safeway (as compared to King Soopers). I don't like suburbia. It feels ungenuine, because it's all apartment complexes or condo communities, and chain restaurants / retail stores. There're no small, long-established local businesses. No cozy nooks. But the price and location is right, for now. We'll see for the long term.

Well, that's all for now peeps. Talk at you later!