I kept using all the things I’ve been up to as an excuse not to update you, but I’ll never get on with writing unless I do this.  So if you know me, you’re friends with me in real life, or you have an interest in details like my cat’s health or my career, read on.

For the rest of you, I promise that this will clear the blockage, and good things will follow.

My job is really busy

In February I went from having one jobs to two, which to those of you who enjoy the maths is a 100% increase in responsibilities.  On the one hand it’s been a great experience and a huge vote of confidence, given how long I’ve been working at my new company; on the other, it’s been a big adjustment to the entirety of my previous professional experience, so I’m constantly in this state of edgy nervousness.

There are a lot of politics behind why this is, of course:

  • Moving from a gigantic company to a relatively small one
  • Growing from a very narrow set of responsibilities to a very broad ones
  • Dealing with high-level executives with very different styles and priorities
  • Being incapable of enjoying anything for very long without finding something wrong with myself

The vitally important thing to keep in mind, though, it that two jobs permits me to say things like, “Oh man, I’ve been in back-to-back meetings all day” and not being dishonest in any way.  It’s very liberating.

I’m sort of a jerk now

This is a follow-on to the previous point, insofar as I now find myself complaining to my friends, former colleagues and parents about how such-and-such a senior executive wouldn’t return my e-mail, even though so-and-so the CEO of whateverplace was demanding an answer right away.

The thing is, through Tina I’ve been able to make friends with a lot of people in all kinds of professions, from teaching to high-steel crane operation.  This is because she is the sort of social person who will know and be greeted by at least five different people every time she goes to Costco, whereas I am the type of person who will get lost and feel the urge to cry every time I go to Costco.

But what do you do when you run into folks you’ve never met before, or maybe were only introduced to casually?  You chat about the weather, whatever flu is killing the elderly lately, and what’s going on at work.  You climb that ladder into slight intimacy by such means — you find out whether people are athletic by what kind of weather they prefer; you find out about their family by hearing who’s caught what diabolical disease; you learn what their interests and passions are (or aren’t) by what they do for a living.

So, they talk to you about going to the cottage, and then about how their kids are down with a nasty chest cold, and how all the kids at school are just as badly off — especially poor Jimmy in their 2nd-grade class — but they’re still really having a good time all around.

And then, you know, the logical thing to do is respond with a story of VPs and presentations to the board and how you might have overspent your operating budget by a few hundred thousand dollars, and you come off like you really have nothing better to do than name-drop in the section of Costco with the giant boxes of laundry soap.

I still have some adjusting to do.

My girlfriend is awesome, thank you for asking

Seriously, she’s a joy.  She moved in with me just over a month ago now, and it hasn’t been that long since we celebrated our first year as a couple.  

There’s a picture of her and me sitting on the desk next to my Mac here, and I keep looking over at it and grinning.  It was taken through the door of the kitchen, with the afternoon sun shining through the windows in the background, so her hair looks all glowing and shiny and angelic while she’s smiling her lovely smile.

Oh, I’m in the shot too.  I’m wearing a Glarkware shirt, my hair is all messy and the shot is a profile, so you can see how my nose actually extends so far out that I can relay cellular phone signals.  Somehow, Tina’s expression says that she thinks I’m handsome anyway — and for that reason, I will always be there to scrub cat shit out of the carpet for her.

No really, I’ve been scrubbing a lot of cat shit recently

Look, I love our kitten.  Valentine D. Massacre is a hilarious, spirited, annoying and beautiful example of everything that makes Cornish Rexes a delightful breed.

“Why did you choose a Rex?” our vet asked me one day, when we had her in for her first checkup.  Our vet is a nice lady, but she’s very much the kind of person who was born to deal with animals — she has a certain interpersonal brutality that is well-suited to them, and markedly less so to people.  ”Because let’s face it, they have their problems.”

“Oh, you know,” I said, and went on to explain all the things I’ve said before:  They’re playful and unusual, they act more like dogs than cats sometimes, they’re bizarre and pretty in an ugly way.

The vet cocked an eye at me, and finally answered, “Hrmm.”  After a moment she added, “They have their problems, y’know — that’s the joy of purebreds.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said.  ”I grew up with boxers!  Talk about problems!  Both my dogs died by the time they were six!  Ha ha ha, HA HA HA HA HA….!”

So, that was the first time at the vet.  We’ve been back now about four times, since we got the cat in February, dealing with everything from fungal infections to dehydration to inappropriate elimination.  That last one is what they call it when your cat doesn’t use the litterbox properly, and instead spray rancid liquid cat stool behind your couch, under your bed, under your downstairs futon, all over the laundry room, and ultimately anywhere that they can.

It is, I agree, highly inappropriate.

We actually got it under control, and in a stroke of raw genius I decided that the problem was permanently solved.  We went right back to the food we were giving her before, and now we’re once again enjoying the juicy, liquid fruits of my prideful sin.  

I have grown desperate.  I am feeding her pumpkin.  I went trolling through grocery stores on the Victoria Day holiday, muttering that I need pumpkin god dammit not pie filling, so obsessed have I become with resolving my cat’s digestive issues.  I am tired of smelling like feline feces when I go to bed at night:  It is an adhesive odor.

On one of our other visits to the vet, it was suggested that we start considering taking her back to the breeder.  

“This is getting expensive,” we were told, “so if that’s not what you’re interested in…”  

The thing is, I can see that.  I can see where people would draw the line, whether it’s at the costs involved or the promises to one’s self that this is the last brown feline surprise to extract from the deep-pile shag.  You can do the math, you can quickly realize that when you get up to two or three times what you paid for the original cat, that maybe you’ve spent too much.

I listened to a lady just the other day in the pet food store, talking about her Burnese Mountain Dog puppy, who was laying happily at her feet.  She was telling the clerk about how she’d gotten a call from the breeder after she’d picked the puppy out, telling her that there’d been an accident and the dog had suffered some “trauma” to his back.  As it turned out, “trauma” was damage to his vertebrae, to the point where if it doesn’t heal properly he’ll probably have to get spinal fusion or suffer a pinched nerve his entire life.

“The breeder knew there’d be issues,” the lady went on, “so she just gave me the dog.  That’s about fifteen hundred dollars right there, and so far I’ve only spent about four hundred at the vet’s.  So, I’m still in the money,” she said,  ”So to speak.  After that, I’ll have to decide what to do.”

But there he was, just sitting at her feet and doing what Burnese Mountain Dogs are good at:  Being extremely large and pleasant and energetic, wagging his tail and smiling happily at everyone, gimping around to say hello.

And here Valentine is, curled into a tiny section of my lap, with her tail wound around my ankle to make sure I don’t go anywhere.  So you do what you have to.

Then there are the small details

I turned thirty-one this week.  I’m glad that things have turned out the way they did:  I saw folks get married and grow their families; I watched my nephew get old enough to slaughter me in Wii Boxing.  I owe my family and friends for that, wonderful people that I’m lucky to have known for so long.

The farthest that I travelled this past year was to Victoria, B.C., and got to stick my foot in a different, colder part of the Pacific.  I saw Bill Clinton speak.  I got to speak to audiences of my own, and get them excited about things they used to hate.  I owe my job for that.

And somewhere along the line, this website crossed the line into being nine years old.  I’ve been on the internet in some form or another since 1999, and some of you out there have been with me for all that time.  I forget how much fun it is, and yet I never hesitate to plunk down whatever it costs to host this thing and keep it going — it’s just great to be here.  I owe you for that.

But enough mushiness

I’ve ripped off Gwen’s format enough.  Time to get back into the swing of things.