Reflections

I have got to say that this year has been crazy. Not all bad or good, just crazy. I'm hoping that next year will mellow out a little for me and if I can push my luck, it'll bring a lot more joy with it than the past two years have brought.
I know some of you have been wondering what happened to me - I was posting quite often and then seemed to have disappeared. Well, life. In August I got really sick. I was having rather intense abdominal pain every time I ate or drank anything - including water. My symptoms stumped even the head of the Gastrointestinal facility I went to. We decided that for lack of anything else to do, I should get rid of my gallbladder. So, right before Halloween I had surgery.
I felt back to normal almost immediately, except for some small adjustments that no one really tells you about until after you have the surgery and are experiencing "busters in-and-out."

So, while adjusting to that, Thanksgiving comes and goes, sharing with me a wonderful sinus infection. The antibiotics throw my body completely back to square one, and just before Christmas I started putting it back in place.
With all that going on, I'm waiting for my editor to get back to me with the final edits for Choice, I've been slowly working on Convergence, started a new non-fiction short, and have changed the setting for The Head Hunter and have been working on that rather intensely. I'm hoping that 2017 will see at lest 3 releases for you to enjoy. That's my goal, and as long as things progress as they have the last half of this year, it should be attainable.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and may 2017 find you in good spirits with reasons to be positive. <3
~Jean

Positivity

I have a friend who's in the hospital. He's one of the most ridiculous (in a good way) people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
A few years ago, he found himself in rehab trying to learn to walk with an amputated leg. Being a good friend, I wanted to let him know I was there for him, I cared, and help if he needed anything. I was a bundle of nerves as I went to his room. Losing a limb can change a person. He'd always been positive and silly, but would this make him depressed? Would he be angry? Or could we joke and would he find the pirate hat I had in the car as funny as he used to?
Walking into his room, he was just finishing his jello and greeted me with a hearty "argh!" We talked, laughed, and while he did admit to feeling sad about losing his limb, he thought the whole pirate angle was hilarious. Said he'd get a fake parrot for the next time he had to meet with PT. Months later, he got a tattoo on his other leg with a finger pointing to the stump and above it read "I'm with Stumpy."
Last week he lost the other leg.
This was after he lost his dog of 10 years, his step-father passed before that, and two weeks prior to surgery, his mom had a stroke. I thought for sure he'd be sucking on a bullet. Nope. I walked in and he greeted me with a big smile. "Hey skinny! How you doing?" (I've lost weight in the past few months - not on purpose) "Those better not have cost you very much." He sends me an accusing glare as I hand him a stuffed cat with about 10 balloons pinned to it.
I shake it off, knowing he'd look at them and smile a little when I left, so they were worth the ridiculous fee the hospital charges. We talked for a while, catching up on things and he was telling me the various things he could envision as he looked at the watercolor flower painting on his wall. His doc came in to talk about pain meds and left. After she left, he looked at me and said, "well, I always did admire Lt. Dan."
It took me a second, and then we just laughed and laughed.
I left, amazed that someone could still maintain their sense of humor and positive outlook in life after all that had happened. He's crazy, and humbles me almost every time we talk. I want to be that positive light in someones life.

Family

I am so excited and nervous to meet my uncle next month. He called today to let me know that he's gotten his tickets and will be here for a work conference and would like to finally meet face-to-face. This past year has been surreal because family I never thought I'd know, contacted us. 

Let me rewind a bit. My mom was adopted and never knew her birth family. I always knew that I might have more family out in the ether that I may or may not ever meet. When dating, it was always in the back of my mind; I prayed I wasn't accidentally kissing my cousin - ew. Years went by, I got married, and the family question faded into the background; except on the rare occasion that someone wanted family history for some reason or another. 

My sister-in-law lost her brother and went on a rampage about how important family bonds were. Said I should be doing anything and everything I could to find my mom's birth parents. It opened the old questions and old wounds. We had never really been accepted in my mom's adoptive family. Never really in any of our family, if I'm being honest. There was always that undercurrent of - something. It was an unspoken barrier that I knew at an early age that I'd never overcome. So I always kept my distance, kept quiet, to myself, and tried not to let being the black sheep bother me. I have relationships with my family members now, it's easier to maintain now that communication has been relegated to fb, texts, and the occasional face time. No more awkward family reunions, or really many family gatherings at all. And when there are, it's easy just to showcase the positive in life. 

So, a few months ago, my mom was contacted by her younger brother. She gave him my info, and we've all been dealing with the discovery of family. I started understanding my sister-in-law's obsession with family, and I've been struggling to put into words why knowing them has been so important. 

Will it change my day-to-day life? No. 

I was trying to discuss it with my husband, who I thought would understand as he doesn't really know much of his family either, but nope. He just doesn't care to have more people in his life. He's content with his little circle of life, his routine, and has no desire to change it. He asked me, "What's getting to know them going to do? Add people to your Christmas Card list?"

And it really hit me that - no. Knowing them won't alter my life in a dramatic life-changing scene like you see in the movies. That's not the point. It's family. It's a chance to truly be accepted for who I am, not what people want me to be - by family, not friends. And while having him accept me or not won't change anything in my life, the little girl in me craves it. It answers some questions as to why we are the way we are, history, genetics. It's important in a thousand different ways, yet vastly unimportant. It was Schrodinger's Cat, and now the box has been opened. Does it truly change anything, knowing if the cat was alive or dead? Not really - unless it was your cat.

I just needed to vent. To try to explain away confusing emotions without hiding. 

My special little princess

My oldest cat is the most annoying, adorable little pile of fur you'd ever want to strangle. Most days she tries every possible way to purr her little body as close to me or my hubs as she can. If she's awake, you can usually hear her purr from the moment you enter the living room to the moment another cat enters her six-foot visual radius. Then the most god-awful growl/yowl emits from her throat, making you think that in seconds she may be torn to shreds.
Damona is fourteen and absolutely hates cats.
I've tried explaining to her that she, herself, is a cat, but she'll have none of that. We've come to a compromise, however. She will tolerate, even play with, the black cats in our house. But any of the others that come anywhere near here - beware. The screech of impending death will emit; interrupting whatever it is anyone in the house was doing, inciting a sliver of panic that she may, in fact, be facing her last moments on Earth. When said cat moves on to whatever it is they were doing in the first place, she will quiet down, hunkering in her cat-cube-of-safety until a cat-free human settles on the couch.
Another part of our truce is her room. Yes. You read that right. My 14-year-old cat has her own human-sized room, and has had this room all to herself for years. She has everything a cat could ever dream of in this room - a pillow snuggled on a shelf under the desk, a window seat, cat scratch post, cat condo, litter box, food, water, and a large dog bed complete with blankets. Each night as I go to bed, I gather her up, trying to avoid her claws as she reaches to cling to me - there may be an evil cat in the room that I didn't see, just waiting for the split second they need to rip her to shreds. I take her over to the hubs and he gives her kisses. We then traverse through the terrifying house, narrowly making it down the hallway of doom into her bedroom. Here I have to let her see the vast open space so she knows that none of the evil creatures have followed us into her sanctuary. Only then can I place her delicately upon her fluffy dog bed so that she can saunter toward her food dish.
Her night-light doubles as a wax-burner, keeping her room smelling like fruit or some random flower she's never seen. Fulfilling my nightly duties, I am dismissed so the delicate princess can nom her food in privacy. I turn off the light, closing the door until it clicks closed.
In the morning I open it and let her out. Usually I have to retrieve her from wherever she decided to curl up and take her back out to her perch in the living room. Lord forbid I leave her to traverse the hallway of doom by herself! Keep in mind, that three feet from her perch is another litter box, food, water, and my couch. (I'm insanely clean and no, you can't smell cat crap when you sit on my couch - that would be beyond disgusting!) Usually the other cats come out for breakfast (which is in the other room, but still visible from her perch) and then go immediately back to the king-sized tempurpedic bed and pass out until we come home from work.
They all have such a hard life.
Over the past couple of months, she's been increasingly annoying in her bedroom, and the hubs has been opening her door when he comes to bed so that he can actually sleep without hearing the song of her people. She's actually gotten to where she doesn't even want to go to her room - she wants to stay out in the living room and sleep on her perch. Rather than argue, we thought that maybe she was getting over her strange paranoia and hatred of cats, so we've been letting her be a "big girl" and rule the house as she sees fit.
I got home today, sat on my spot on the couch, and smelled something I hate - cat pee. The litter box was clean, the couch unsoiled, and I crawled around on hands and knees looking for where she had her "accident." I finally found it on the folded blanket she slept on the previous night. She has now been thrown (figuratively, not actually thrown) into her dungeonous room, where she is meowing, scratching, and whining at the door; and the rest of our house is being scrubbed with bleach - just in case.
Exactly what I wanted to do on my Friday night.