First, I want to apologize for the lowered post output recently. I've just been very busy, but I do have an gigantic backlog of worthy commentary just waiting to spring forth soon, so stay tuned. By way of "inching back into the pool" I leave you with this actual quote from my wife:
"Wakachicka wakachicka wakachicka"
She was listening to Barry White at the time.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sackcloth and Ashes
I generally don’t make political comments on here, because people just can’t deal with it anymore. People have become mean spirited and close minded in regards to politics (or maybe they always were). I am going to say this much though: If Obama wins tonight like it looks like he’s going to, I’m going to wear sackcloth and ash to work tomorrow. This is not entirely a display of mourning, but also a reflection of my belief that after Obama implements his tax plan, his energy plan and his domestic ideas, all I’ll be able to afford is sackcloth and ash, so I might as well get used to wearing it. I honestly believe that it could be worse than the Carter Presidency, in which inflation, interest rates, and unemployment all hit double digits. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that I’m the one who hasn’t been paying attention, and if I do find myself in a better place in three years because of Obama I’ll take all that extra money and buy each of my liberal friends a glass of wine. Those of you in California may have to go in halfsies on the airline ticket. So, here’s to… Hope. 8^)
Next up: Thoughts From the Road (LA & PDC 2008)
(which I should have already posted, but I’ve been a wee bit lazy)
Next up: Thoughts From the Road (LA & PDC 2008)
(which I should have already posted, but I’ve been a wee bit lazy)
Monday, October 13, 2008
This Post Is Not About Flies
Let’s talk about flies for a second, just to set the stage for last night’s events. Anyone with children has become used to the idea that there will be flies in the house sometimes. This is not because children are unclean, which they are, but because children believe door hinges are sacred objects, and that to use them any more than absolutely necessary is to risk invoking the wrath of the door hinge gods. A child going outside to pick blackberries a block away from home will leave the door open on their way out because, well, they’ll be coming back through that door at some point and they don’t want to close it without good reason. The phrase “but I’m coming back in” has been wielded by children all over the world as an all powerful talisman against the bogeyman of needlessly closed doors, and it has worked for them. Along these same lines, a child also believes a conversation is only valid if one member of the conversing group is standing in an open doorway. As an experiment, I once gave one of my daughters a stern lecture about leaving the door open. I included all of the normal reasons, including incoming bugs and outgoing conditioned air. I gave her this talk *while she was standing in an open door*, distractedly swatting at the bugs that were attempting to fly past her, upstream into our house, their little wings working courageously against the torrents of powerful, conditioned air that were pouring out of our house in the opposite direction. I kept this talk going as long as possible, and never once did it sink in that she was currently doing exactly what it was that I was telling her not to do. For reference, both of my school aged children are straight A students. It’s just a kid thing.
So, the above is basically my excuse for having the occasional fly in my house, but as the title above states, that’s not what this is about. This is about what happened around 2am last night, in my bedroom (don’t get your hopes up). Let’s start with this: For those of you who don’t know it, the primary purpose of a man’s leg during sleep is temperature regulation. A little warm? Expose one foot. Really warm? Uncover an entire leg. Arctic chill? Retract both legs fully into the blanketed warming area. (Yes, I am aware that brings us dangerously close to being reptiles. Take it where you will.). Well last night fell into the “a little warm” category, and as such I had one foot properly exposed, as diagrammed in the male body temperature regulation manual. At some point after 2am, I felt a slight… crawling… on my ankle. My first thought was “Damnit, there’s a fly in here”. I shook my ankle once, frustrated in the knowledge that we were about to begin the fly version of “wash-rinse-repeat” in which every 30 seconds for the rest of the night I would shake my foot and the fly would take off, circle the room once, then say “Oh hey, look at that! A foot to land on!” and we would start all over again. Anyone who has played this game knows the joy of it. They fly, however, did not leave when I shook my ankle, so harnessing my growing irritation I gave it another really, really good shake. That’s when the fly… skittered. That’s the best word I can think of. It skittered up my ankle, squeezing itself between my calf and the bed. This brought me “moderately” more awake (in the sense that the Titanic “moderately” sank beneath the ocean), and allowed me to ascertain several things:
At this point I did what any red blooded American male would do: I levitated. I’m not sure if any muscles were actually involved in this, or if it was sheer will power alone. I’m not even sure if I “rose” into the air, or if I just teleported to a position approximately three feet above the mattress. Either way, that’s where I went. Once there, I rotated face down and sure enough, there below me was a dark, fast moving thing roughly the size of a large pecan. The thought “house fly” was quickly replaced with the obviously more correct thought: “daemon imp from the blackest pits of hell”. After a brief moment of reflection, I came to the conclusion that sharing my bed with a skittering, spiky, daemon imp was probably not going to work out for the best. That decision made, and still hovering in the air, I called upon my years of martial arts training and assaulted the creature with an attack best described as “one man slap fight at 200 frames per second”. One of the approximately 4,000 blows I got off in the first 1.3 seconds of levitation made contact with the daemon imp, hurling it into and almost through the bedroom wall. This was good, because the sheets were already beginning to smolder from the friction created by my humming bird like assault on the creature. I was in no way reassured by the loud crack it made on impacting the wall, but I nevertheless allowed gravity to resume its normal governance over my body and lowered myself carefully to the floor. Upon inspecting the carnage I discovered that my adversary had, in its dying moments, managed to transmorgiphy itself from daemon imp into a dinner plate sized cockroach, which I think you’ll agree was infinitely more horrible. Well played, daemon imp.
So now I had a dead cockroach and a heartbeat of around 830 beat per minute to deal with. For the cockroach, I gathered him up in several large paper towels and headed to the bathroom, past my wife who was already up “doing things that mothers do in the middle of the night when they have a six week old child”. That’s when I made a fatal mistake, flushing away any chance I may have had of getting back to sleep that night (not that there was much of one to begin with). My wife asked “what was all of that?” and in my complete and total ignorance I replied “A cockroach just crawled up my leg while I was in bed”. You see what I just did there, don’t you? The shudder that went through her body at those words actually rattled dishes in the kitchen. Before I opened my mouth about it there had been exactly one half of the matrimonial bed that had to deal with heebie jeebies for the rest of the night. Now it was a clean sweep. Instead of lying down beside a beautiful, happy, tired young woman I was now going to be sleeping beside the equivalent of a blue fin tuna wired to a car battery. And I was pretty much in the same state. In fact it was fun, because we were close enough to set each other off, arcing back and forth like a pair of shock therapy patients on relays. One gets a jolt, the other gets a jolt. Yay us. And let me be honest, we went off several times during the remainder of the night, each of us convinced that every crease and crevice in the sheets was actually the starting line for the “Next Great Roach Race for the Crotch”. I may be exaggerating slightly there, but I don’t think so. Sleep was not an easy mistress last night.
So here I am this morning, once again tired and out of sorts. I left my wife at home this morning with very explicit instructions in regards to the exterminator we supposedly employ (the “explicit” part referring to the language she should use with them). I want to come home and see that our house has assumed the natural color of pesticide. I want to see already dead things digging themselves out of the ground to get away from our house. I want an old Indian man to walk right out of a Stephen King novel and tell me not to bury anything in the back yard, because the ground has “gone sour”. I’m calling in the exterminator, the catholic church, and the national guard because I don’t care how long you live in a house, to the question “how many times over a ten year period should a cockroach crawl across your sleeping body” the correct answer is indisputably “none”.
The Silver Lining: The funniest sounds you will ever hear are those made by someone who thinks a bug is crawling up their leg, even if that someone is you.
So, the above is basically my excuse for having the occasional fly in my house, but as the title above states, that’s not what this is about. This is about what happened around 2am last night, in my bedroom (don’t get your hopes up). Let’s start with this: For those of you who don’t know it, the primary purpose of a man’s leg during sleep is temperature regulation. A little warm? Expose one foot. Really warm? Uncover an entire leg. Arctic chill? Retract both legs fully into the blanketed warming area. (Yes, I am aware that brings us dangerously close to being reptiles. Take it where you will.). Well last night fell into the “a little warm” category, and as such I had one foot properly exposed, as diagrammed in the male body temperature regulation manual. At some point after 2am, I felt a slight… crawling… on my ankle. My first thought was “Damnit, there’s a fly in here”. I shook my ankle once, frustrated in the knowledge that we were about to begin the fly version of “wash-rinse-repeat” in which every 30 seconds for the rest of the night I would shake my foot and the fly would take off, circle the room once, then say “Oh hey, look at that! A foot to land on!” and we would start all over again. Anyone who has played this game knows the joy of it. They fly, however, did not leave when I shook my ankle, so harnessing my growing irritation I gave it another really, really good shake. That’s when the fly… skittered. That’s the best word I can think of. It skittered up my ankle, squeezing itself between my calf and the bed. This brought me “moderately” more awake (in the sense that the Titanic “moderately” sank beneath the ocean), and allowed me to ascertain several things:
- The creature was much, much larger than a fly
- The creature was hard and spiky
- The creature was moving at a rapid pace up my leg towards regions where hard, spiky creatures are strictly forbidden (unless you’re Richard Gere).
At this point I did what any red blooded American male would do: I levitated. I’m not sure if any muscles were actually involved in this, or if it was sheer will power alone. I’m not even sure if I “rose” into the air, or if I just teleported to a position approximately three feet above the mattress. Either way, that’s where I went. Once there, I rotated face down and sure enough, there below me was a dark, fast moving thing roughly the size of a large pecan. The thought “house fly” was quickly replaced with the obviously more correct thought: “daemon imp from the blackest pits of hell”. After a brief moment of reflection, I came to the conclusion that sharing my bed with a skittering, spiky, daemon imp was probably not going to work out for the best. That decision made, and still hovering in the air, I called upon my years of martial arts training and assaulted the creature with an attack best described as “one man slap fight at 200 frames per second”. One of the approximately 4,000 blows I got off in the first 1.3 seconds of levitation made contact with the daemon imp, hurling it into and almost through the bedroom wall. This was good, because the sheets were already beginning to smolder from the friction created by my humming bird like assault on the creature. I was in no way reassured by the loud crack it made on impacting the wall, but I nevertheless allowed gravity to resume its normal governance over my body and lowered myself carefully to the floor. Upon inspecting the carnage I discovered that my adversary had, in its dying moments, managed to transmorgiphy itself from daemon imp into a dinner plate sized cockroach, which I think you’ll agree was infinitely more horrible. Well played, daemon imp.
So now I had a dead cockroach and a heartbeat of around 830 beat per minute to deal with. For the cockroach, I gathered him up in several large paper towels and headed to the bathroom, past my wife who was already up “doing things that mothers do in the middle of the night when they have a six week old child”. That’s when I made a fatal mistake, flushing away any chance I may have had of getting back to sleep that night (not that there was much of one to begin with). My wife asked “what was all of that?” and in my complete and total ignorance I replied “A cockroach just crawled up my leg while I was in bed”. You see what I just did there, don’t you? The shudder that went through her body at those words actually rattled dishes in the kitchen. Before I opened my mouth about it there had been exactly one half of the matrimonial bed that had to deal with heebie jeebies for the rest of the night. Now it was a clean sweep. Instead of lying down beside a beautiful, happy, tired young woman I was now going to be sleeping beside the equivalent of a blue fin tuna wired to a car battery. And I was pretty much in the same state. In fact it was fun, because we were close enough to set each other off, arcing back and forth like a pair of shock therapy patients on relays. One gets a jolt, the other gets a jolt. Yay us. And let me be honest, we went off several times during the remainder of the night, each of us convinced that every crease and crevice in the sheets was actually the starting line for the “Next Great Roach Race for the Crotch”. I may be exaggerating slightly there, but I don’t think so. Sleep was not an easy mistress last night.
So here I am this morning, once again tired and out of sorts. I left my wife at home this morning with very explicit instructions in regards to the exterminator we supposedly employ (the “explicit” part referring to the language she should use with them). I want to come home and see that our house has assumed the natural color of pesticide. I want to see already dead things digging themselves out of the ground to get away from our house. I want an old Indian man to walk right out of a Stephen King novel and tell me not to bury anything in the back yard, because the ground has “gone sour”. I’m calling in the exterminator, the catholic church, and the national guard because I don’t care how long you live in a house, to the question “how many times over a ten year period should a cockroach crawl across your sleeping body” the correct answer is indisputably “none”.
The Silver Lining: The funniest sounds you will ever hear are those made by someone who thinks a bug is crawling up their leg, even if that someone is you.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
One Season to the Next
I took a walk at work today. It was a beautiful day for it, and my office is in a really nice neighborhood, so it just seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. I really enjoyed the walk, but I did notice something a little different when I walked by the big grass field. It's a field I used to play Ultimate Frisbee on before life got so busy. It's similar to the fields I've played soccer on, and flag football on, and even bears resemblance to the lined and leveled football fields of my high school days. It's the smell. That fresh, well kept grass smell that becomes so strong in Spring and Fall. It's always had that effect of instantly transporting me back to... somewhere. Soccer, football, ultimate, any of those places. It's always a good moment. It brings with it that little boost of adrenaline, that singularity of focus, and the happy, clean feeling of getting ready to walk out onto the field of competition. I've always loved that feeling, that smell. Today was different though. I walked by the field. I smelled the grass. I got transported... but I didn't go to my old football fields. I didn't go to the ultimate fields either. In fact, I didn't go to any of my old battlegrounds. I went somewhere else. Just like that, the second the smell hit me, I was at my child's soccer game. Both of my daughters play soccer now. They are both pretty good at it, and both really, really love the game, and I love watching them play. And that's where I went. So I don't know when it happened, and I don't know how it happened, but I think that what's going on here is that maybe that smell belongs to them now, to my little girls. My days on the grassy fields are drawing to a close, and theirs are just beginning to bloom, and honestly, I'm OK with that, although my wife might argue otherwise. I'll always love that air of competition. I'll always think I'm ten years younger than I am. Still, nothing I've ever achieved on those fields can bring with it the same joy as watching my children on their fields, finding out what they're capable of, running, playing, laughing, competing... growing. Enjoy those grass covered fields girls. I cede them to you without regret. I would tell you to make daddy proud, but I think you're already there.
There are two kinds of people in the world
Those that secretly hope that there are no monsters in their closet, and those that secretly hope that there are.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Career Choices
I hit the 5 year mark today at what I lovingly refer to as my "day job" and it brought with it a thought provoking contrast. Several years ago a good friend of mine left his "day job" and the company stroked him a check north of $30K for the effort. I've stuck around at my "day job" for five years now and they sent me a gift card... for $75. Basically what that means is never, ever, ever take career advice from me.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Why I Can't Blame God Tonight
This is going to be a little rambling, and is definitely a divergence from my usually lighthearted post, so bear with me…
Barney the cat passed on today, six days after our new daughter, Wren, was born. He had developed some sort of bladder condition with a long and impressive sounding name, the short of which was that his bladder was blocked, backing urine into his kidneys, and hurting him pretty badly. It would eventually kill him. For $700 to $800 we could purchase a “chance” at getting him better, with the high probability that the problem would recur again in the very near future. The other option was the one that most pet owners have to face at some time in their lives: when is it best to let your pet go in the most comfortable, happy terms you can arrange? That was an especially difficult choice for such a good cat, a creature that had been with my wife through so many hard times, and who had so clearly and visibly loved her and this whole family. I won’t go into a long litany of everything he did for us, I’ll just say he’s the best male cat I’ve ever known, and even had the good graces to not trigger my cat allergies.
The decision we made was very, very hard on my wife (ok, on me too), and is only one of many crappy things my wife has had to deal with during what should be a beautiful time in her life. Things like my ex who decided, in the middle of Kari’s pregnancy, to sue for custody of the kids she gave up 7 years ago. Kari is one of the most wonderful, thoughtful, caring, beautiful women I have ever known and she deserves more than anything to enjoy her time growing and caring for Wren. She doesn’t deserve all hardships put on her lately, most certainly not to lose a creature that had been like a best friend to her, days after what should be one of the most joyous events of her life. It’s the sort of thing that really pisses me off, and would generally make me scream and rage against the injustice of the world, and maybe even call God out by name on it. I’m not going to do it this time, however, and if you’ll bear with me a little longer, I’ll tell you why.
I used to tell people that the scariest moment of my entire life was the day I was playing with my oldest daughter, then about 3 years old I guess, in a plant warehouse. We were playing chase. She was running from me, laughing hysterically, when she hit a thin puddle of water on the finished concrete floor. Her feet went out from under her faster than you could process it happening. The first thing to hit the concrete was the back of her head, and it made a sound like a high powered rifle going off. In that brief moment, I was sure that her brain had been hurt. I don’t think I had ever really known fear before that moment. Despite the fact that my daughter was in fact fine, I still have trouble even thinking about that day. The ghost of that raw, chest crushing fear is still right there. I tell you this as introduction to the “other” day in my life when I really, really knew what freezing, crushing, pleading to God fear is.
My newest daughter, Wren, was born at 1:22am last Thursday morning. She is a beautiful, healthy baby who at age 5 days already shows all the signs of being a future world leader. My incredible wife had a somewhat difficult labor (never ever trust anyone who says the word “cervidil” to you) but came through it like a champion. Those of you who have had kids will know the combined sense of joy and relief that comes when you see your healthy baby child come out of the womb looking healthy and whole. It is an incredible, euphoric moment because as much as we don’t like to admit it, we all have hidden fears of the worst and finally seeing our healthy child alive and well, well it’s just a good thing. So Kari and I both had that moment of utter happiness when Wren came into the world, and all was good. In our case, several nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit were already on hand because of a fairly common condition which basically boils down to “the baby made a poo while still in the womb”. This happens all the time and the NICU folks were just there to suction her out really well in case any “myconium” (baby poo) had gotten into her nasal cavity. As soon as Wren was out the doc handed her to the NICU staff to do their thing. They put her on the warming table and got started in a fairly standard fashion. Then things started to turn. A good ten seconds passed, and we had not heard Wren cry yet. I cannot and will not try to convey the feelings that started up then. Another ten seconds went by. From my standing position by my wife I could see them get out the respirator bag. My wife and I both heard the word “intubate”. More time passed, but I don’t know how much. The world started to turn over. I remember my wife, with tears running down her face, praying one word, out loud, over and over again: “Please… Please… Please”. I remember the most terrifying moment of all, when all of the nurses in the room suddenly gathered around the warming table, not working on Wren but trying to act as if they had all just casually drifted into a little clump around the table. They were clearly doing what they had been taught: shielding me from seeing what was happening to my child. This more than anything convinced me, as I stood there gripping my wife’s hand, that our daughter was laying on a table dying. I wanted to run to her, but I wanted to stay out of the way. I wanted to cry to her that I was there, but I wanted to hide from my wife what it was I could see in the nurses faces. I felt a huge, gaping void open up inside me, and then I did what probably millions of people before me have done. I tried to make a deal. I said “God, please don’t take my baby. Don’t take her, and I promise that I will never forget that you gave me a miracle today. Please God. Please”. I prayed that over and over in my head, and whether or not that prayer had anything to do with anything, God didn’t take her. At some point we finally heard her cry, and we got to hold her, and she was beautiful, and healthy, and alert. She was alive.
So all of the above is to tell you why I can’t blame God tonight. It hurts to have to let Barney go, and it hurts to see my wife have to let him go. It hurts to look around the room and see his toys there, to see the catnip filled scratch box that he used to flip upside all the time. He really was a good, good cat, and he put up with more out of our crazy family than any one cat should have to. He deserved a long, happy life. He deserved better than some stupid bladder disease, and my wife deserves better than having to tell an old friend goodbye when she should be celebrating a new one. I’m going to grieve for both of them, and for myself, but I’m not going to get angry. Five days ago I made a deal. I got a miracle. And I remember that. And as cliché as it may sound, I think maybe Barney’s job was to get Kari safely to me, to this family, to this time with our new baby girl. Maybe he did his job. He was there when Kari needed him, and he was there for this family when me, Kari, and my two daughters were learning how to *be* a family. So maybe he did what he was supposed to do, and maybe he has a new job now. I hear that cats make great guardian angels, and I happen to know that there’s a new little girl in town that is going to need one. I think she would like Barney the cat.
Goodbye Barney. Thank you for taking care of Kari until I could get there. You're a good, good cat.
Barney the cat passed on today, six days after our new daughter, Wren, was born. He had developed some sort of bladder condition with a long and impressive sounding name, the short of which was that his bladder was blocked, backing urine into his kidneys, and hurting him pretty badly. It would eventually kill him. For $700 to $800 we could purchase a “chance” at getting him better, with the high probability that the problem would recur again in the very near future. The other option was the one that most pet owners have to face at some time in their lives: when is it best to let your pet go in the most comfortable, happy terms you can arrange? That was an especially difficult choice for such a good cat, a creature that had been with my wife through so many hard times, and who had so clearly and visibly loved her and this whole family. I won’t go into a long litany of everything he did for us, I’ll just say he’s the best male cat I’ve ever known, and even had the good graces to not trigger my cat allergies.
The decision we made was very, very hard on my wife (ok, on me too), and is only one of many crappy things my wife has had to deal with during what should be a beautiful time in her life. Things like my ex who decided, in the middle of Kari’s pregnancy, to sue for custody of the kids she gave up 7 years ago. Kari is one of the most wonderful, thoughtful, caring, beautiful women I have ever known and she deserves more than anything to enjoy her time growing and caring for Wren. She doesn’t deserve all hardships put on her lately, most certainly not to lose a creature that had been like a best friend to her, days after what should be one of the most joyous events of her life. It’s the sort of thing that really pisses me off, and would generally make me scream and rage against the injustice of the world, and maybe even call God out by name on it. I’m not going to do it this time, however, and if you’ll bear with me a little longer, I’ll tell you why.
I used to tell people that the scariest moment of my entire life was the day I was playing with my oldest daughter, then about 3 years old I guess, in a plant warehouse. We were playing chase. She was running from me, laughing hysterically, when she hit a thin puddle of water on the finished concrete floor. Her feet went out from under her faster than you could process it happening. The first thing to hit the concrete was the back of her head, and it made a sound like a high powered rifle going off. In that brief moment, I was sure that her brain had been hurt. I don’t think I had ever really known fear before that moment. Despite the fact that my daughter was in fact fine, I still have trouble even thinking about that day. The ghost of that raw, chest crushing fear is still right there. I tell you this as introduction to the “other” day in my life when I really, really knew what freezing, crushing, pleading to God fear is.
My newest daughter, Wren, was born at 1:22am last Thursday morning. She is a beautiful, healthy baby who at age 5 days already shows all the signs of being a future world leader. My incredible wife had a somewhat difficult labor (never ever trust anyone who says the word “cervidil” to you) but came through it like a champion. Those of you who have had kids will know the combined sense of joy and relief that comes when you see your healthy baby child come out of the womb looking healthy and whole. It is an incredible, euphoric moment because as much as we don’t like to admit it, we all have hidden fears of the worst and finally seeing our healthy child alive and well, well it’s just a good thing. So Kari and I both had that moment of utter happiness when Wren came into the world, and all was good. In our case, several nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit were already on hand because of a fairly common condition which basically boils down to “the baby made a poo while still in the womb”. This happens all the time and the NICU folks were just there to suction her out really well in case any “myconium” (baby poo) had gotten into her nasal cavity. As soon as Wren was out the doc handed her to the NICU staff to do their thing. They put her on the warming table and got started in a fairly standard fashion. Then things started to turn. A good ten seconds passed, and we had not heard Wren cry yet. I cannot and will not try to convey the feelings that started up then. Another ten seconds went by. From my standing position by my wife I could see them get out the respirator bag. My wife and I both heard the word “intubate”. More time passed, but I don’t know how much. The world started to turn over. I remember my wife, with tears running down her face, praying one word, out loud, over and over again: “Please… Please… Please”. I remember the most terrifying moment of all, when all of the nurses in the room suddenly gathered around the warming table, not working on Wren but trying to act as if they had all just casually drifted into a little clump around the table. They were clearly doing what they had been taught: shielding me from seeing what was happening to my child. This more than anything convinced me, as I stood there gripping my wife’s hand, that our daughter was laying on a table dying. I wanted to run to her, but I wanted to stay out of the way. I wanted to cry to her that I was there, but I wanted to hide from my wife what it was I could see in the nurses faces. I felt a huge, gaping void open up inside me, and then I did what probably millions of people before me have done. I tried to make a deal. I said “God, please don’t take my baby. Don’t take her, and I promise that I will never forget that you gave me a miracle today. Please God. Please”. I prayed that over and over in my head, and whether or not that prayer had anything to do with anything, God didn’t take her. At some point we finally heard her cry, and we got to hold her, and she was beautiful, and healthy, and alert. She was alive.
So all of the above is to tell you why I can’t blame God tonight. It hurts to have to let Barney go, and it hurts to see my wife have to let him go. It hurts to look around the room and see his toys there, to see the catnip filled scratch box that he used to flip upside all the time. He really was a good, good cat, and he put up with more out of our crazy family than any one cat should have to. He deserved a long, happy life. He deserved better than some stupid bladder disease, and my wife deserves better than having to tell an old friend goodbye when she should be celebrating a new one. I’m going to grieve for both of them, and for myself, but I’m not going to get angry. Five days ago I made a deal. I got a miracle. And I remember that. And as cliché as it may sound, I think maybe Barney’s job was to get Kari safely to me, to this family, to this time with our new baby girl. Maybe he did his job. He was there when Kari needed him, and he was there for this family when me, Kari, and my two daughters were learning how to *be* a family. So maybe he did what he was supposed to do, and maybe he has a new job now. I hear that cats make great guardian angels, and I happen to know that there’s a new little girl in town that is going to need one. I think she would like Barney the cat.
Goodbye Barney. Thank you for taking care of Kari until I could get there. You're a good, good cat.
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