I love my cat. Really!

I do love my cat. She makes me very happy. She relaxes me. She makes me laugh and smile and believe in inherent goodness. I realized just how much I loved her about a month ago when I contemplated moving to Portland without her, and one day I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine and purred and rubbed her head on my hand, and I thought, “There’s no way I can leave her here.” She loves me too. She used to walk around the house crying for an hour every morning when I left for work (my roommates at the time, somewhat irritated, informed me of this); when I leave town, even for a weekend, when I get back, she doesn’t leave my side for hours and follows me into every room.

However, I have to say, I really related to Judith Warner’s column today about whether or not loving her dog “just enough,” was, in fact, enough. People who treat their pets like humans freak me out a little bit.

A generation ago, I think, people allowed themselves to be “good-enough” pet parents. They didn’t routinely get their cats’ teeth cleaned. They didn’t – as a friend of mine in New York recently did – spend $10,000 on kitty chemotherapy. They didn’t take their puppies on “play dates,” as the owner of the returned puppy told me she was instructed to do: “The trainer said, if we were going to have a dog who was going to be socialized appropriately and not have any issues, we had to have her meet 100 people a week so she wouldn’t develop any phobias. Plus 25 to 50 dogs.”

And they didn’t, as a family I know in Washington recently did, spend thousands and thousands of dollars on repeated surgeries for a puppy that had dashed out in traffic and been hit by a car.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I don’t buy my cat “special,” very expensive cat food that I have to go to snooty places to buy. Partly because I think pet food is largely all the same, and, much like bottled water, there’s a huge industry built around convincing people that it’s not. Partly because, at least right now, I simply can’t afford it. And partly because I don’t think my cat should eat better than I do. Sorry, but I don’t.

She’s a cat. She eats poop and dead things. She doesn’t care.

I don’t buy her the cheapest food. Just not terribly expensive stuff, either. And you know what else? If she got terribly ill from something like cancer, I’d probably just put her down rather than go into debt for 20 years to pay for treatment. Sorry, kitty, but I’ll see you on the Other Side. And I really resented being harshly, and vocally, judged by a good friend of mine when I was contemplating leaving her in Austin.

Does this make me a bad parent? Probably, to some people. But I rescued her from a being abandoned on the streets and probably dying, and I found homes for her brothers and sisters, and fed and nurtured all of them until I found those homes (and, honestly, I’m not even a “cat person”), and I give her a pretty cushy life, I must say. I make sure she’s taken care of and has a clean litter box.

But she’s not my whole world. It’s nice to be greeted by her, and to have her snuggle up to me in bed, and come sit next to me on the couch while I’m watching television or reading, just because she wants to sit next to me. But she’s also just a cat.

Granted, a very special, sweet, warm, friendly, adoring, and irreplaceable cat. When she’s gone, I can pretty much guarantee you I won’t be getting another one. I hate having fur everywhere; I hate the smell of litter boxes; I hate that certain people won’t come over to my house because they’re allergic; and she tends to make a lot of noise at night and wake me up frequently, which, if you’re already a bad sleeper like I am, is enfuriating.

So I don’t really know what the point of this post is, except that it feels nice to say out loud, and publically, that I could, in fact, probably love my cat more than I do, but I choose not to.

And I don’t think that makes me a bad person.

In an email from a friend the other day -

I’m missing you already. There so many things going unscoffed at it’s not even funny

That made me very homesick.

I knew when I was doing it, it was a mistake….

All of my boxes I shipped to Oregon have finally arrived, and lo and behold, just as I predicted, in one of them, everything is smashed and ruined. Despite that everything was tightly wrapped, despite that I told them it was fragile stuff, it’s all ruined:

- my favorite coffee mug from Mexico;
- my bedside lamp;
- my favorite plate, which was silly, but had sentimental value to me;
- my etched elephant wine/bourbon glasses;
- a vase that was a gift;
- a homemade mug that was a gift.

I know it’s just stuff, but it was stuff I liked. I mean, honestly, it looks like everything was taken out, unwrapped, smashed, then just thrown back into the box. The box had even been opened and taped back up.

Grrr.

Suburban Nostalgia

Flying into Phoenix last week, I couldn’t help but marvel at just how ugly it is. It sprawls endlessly, a flat, vast expanse of highways, parking lots and strip malls. Staring at all of it, though, I felt a small pang of nostalgia for my youth. Having grown up essentially in the suburbs (although there was no city from which they sprouted; my hometown is basically just a suburb plopped down in the middle of nowhere), I won’t deny that there is some sort of intrinsic comfort in them, a familiarity that I like. Specifically, flying into Phoenix, I thought about summertime as a teenager. It seemed so awful and boring at the time, but in retrospect, I had a hell of a lot of fun in the summer with my friends.

We spent countless evenings desperately searching for something to do, someplace to go, some way to keep ourselves entertained. We shopped, we hung out at people’s houses, watching movies and swimming in backyard pools. We played miniature golf and ate ice cream. We went to see punk rock bands at the local skate park, then drove deep into the woods to find obscure raves and danced all night long. We camped, and broke into abandoned buildings and told ghost stories.

We made our own fun, and the heat of summer evenings always comforts me, makes me feel at home. Those summers were so ripe for discovery: discovery of ourselves and discovery of influences that would shape who we would become. Maybe sometimes I rail against the suburbs so much because they are where I feel most comfortable, just in a visceral, emotional way. I often miss those days of carefree revelry and how much we took for granted. And when I think of those fast and free days of my youth, it is all directly related to cars, and driving (cruising?), and wandering discontentedly through so much suburban waste. I often wonder how differently I would have turned out of I’d grown up in a bigger city, or somewhere more urban, where I had so much more at my disposal (including temptation). It’s impossible to gauge, of course, and despite how much I complained about it, I wouldn’t trade where I grew up for anything.

Ironically, the bigger and more “cosmopolitan” my hometown gets, the less I like it. The less character I think it has, and the less I feel any connection to it when I go back to visit. I suppose everyone feels that way a little bit if they’ve ever fled the place where they grew up.

Lonely Hunter

My first day of class is tomorrow and none too soon. Jody’s first day of student teaching was today, and hence, I spent my first day alone in Oregon. In Forest Grove, no less. It was nice: I picked up my check that I’m going to be living on for the next 4 months (someone’s going to have to learn how to budget….); I read a lot; I watched a movie. But I also got very lonely and fairly bored, a deadly combination that equals depression. I also realize that I need to learn how to be a little lonely and idle without it affecting my mood so much. But dig a little deeper, and I think today the gravity of this move really hit me. How far away I am, how much is at stake, the people I’ve left. It was totally my decision to do so, and I’m glad I did, but it was easy to not really think about it very much until I actually had a full day to be alone and reflect on it.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, though, and I desperately want to be the smartest boy in the class. In fact, I’ve already read two chapters of the textbook for my class tomorrow night. It’s not really a textbook, though, it’s a real book, but one we use in class. It’s called Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling, and I wanted to be prepared if the professor happened to ask any questions about it.

This is me giving a shit about something. I can get insufferable.

So, in other words, I think I’ve had just the perfect amount of time to be here and jerk around a little bit before class. Just long enough to start feeling like I need to be doing something, and that I’m wasting time.

Trouble the Water

Holy balls, I am so excited to see this movie.

I got invited to a rave tonight

but I didn’t go. It was under a bridge downtown in some warehouse or something. Jody and I went and checked out my neighborhood tonight, and I was impressed. Literally within about 4 blocks of my house I have the New Seasons Market, which, for all you Austinites, is just like Wheatsville, except about three times the size, though also very expensive; the People’s Co-op; two different farmer’s markets at least twice a week; the biggest video store in the city, the Clinton Street Video Store; the Clinton Street Theater; and myriad coffee shops and restaurants, including some great-looking lunch (and vegetarian) cafes. Jody and I had a little sitdown at a great Italian place right around the corner from my place and had a lovely dinner. And everything served at the restaurant is homemade and/or local. And I figured out which bus I’ll be taking to school, and it gets me there in just under 15 minutes.

Fun!

We had a very long day walking around downtown, visiting Powell’s (which, I have to say, impressed me with its size, but wasn’t cozy at all, unfortunately, and I didn’t love being in there), finding other, smaller, weirder bookstores, having coffee and pastries, and getting lost and then finding our way again.

On the MAX back to Forest Grove, the people were all packed in like sardines. We stood next to 2 suburban families who had brought their daughters into the city to see Phantom of the Opera, which is having a limited performance at some theater downtown, and we eavesdropped on them the whole way. The daughters were firecrackers, and the moms talked about cooking (everyone here talks about food all the time!), while Jody and I shared smiles across the crowded car. Eventually we made it home and drank a whole bottle of wine while sitting on Jody’s porch talking.

Tomorrow we’re taking it easy and renting some horror films and staying in all day watching them and eating.

And now, Littlejeans and I are going to bed.

Joe Biden in 2004

Much has been said about the potential consequences of failure in Iraq–how it would provide a new haven for terrorists, deal a blow to reformers and modernizers throughout the region, and encourage radicals in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But perhaps failure’s most pernicious legacy will be a further hardening of the Democratic Party’s Vietnam syndrome–its distrust of government and the use of American power.

That syndrome is one reason why, from day one, many of us in Congress pressed the president to level with the American people about what would be required to prevail in Iraq. But he didn’t. He didn’t tell them that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for well over two years. He didn’t tell them the cost would surpass $200 billion–and far exceed Iraq’s oil revenue. He didn’t tell them that our children and grandchildren would pay the bill because of his refusal to rescind even a small portion of the tax cut he gave to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. He didn’t tell them that, even after paying such a heavy price, success was not assured, because no one had ever succeeded at forcibly democratizing a nation in the Middle East, let alone an entire region.

As a result, today those who recognize that we must persevere in Iraq risk losing public support.

Americans sense that our policy is adrift and that we do not have a plan for success. Worse, they may conclude that this is what happens when we venture abroad. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, there will be another Slobodan Milosevic or another Saddam, and the profound mistakes in Iraq will make it harder to generate domestic and international political support for the use of force. That is a legacy we can ill afford.

Maybe, as some argue, so many mistakes have been made in Iraq that it is impossible to turn the corner. Anti-American attitudes and a nascent warlordism may already be so deeply entrenched that there is little we can do to succeed. It would be foolhardy to deny that possibility. But it would be even more foolhardy, and dangerous, to accept failure as inevitable and move to cut our losses. Despite the naysayers, it is not too late. But only the president can alter our course in Iraq. As he did when Congress first authorized him to use force, the president has the choice of using his power effectively or squandering it to satisfy ideological predilections. Let us hope he has grown wiser in the past year.

PU Farm and Lee Falls

Today Jody’s friends Anil and Emily picked us up and drove us out to Lee Falls, up in the mountains about 20 minutes (and a 45 minute hike) from Forest Grove. Along the way, though, we stopped in at the farm Pacific University maintains only about 3 blocks from downtown FG. Emily interns there in the mornings (she and Anil are going to build a fully-sustainable farm together) and wanted to show us all the chickens, baby goats, fields of produce, kittens, and bunny rabbits. It was really impressive. A lot of the produce, also, is maintained by group of Hispanic farmers called Adelantes Mujeres and is sold at the farmer’s market where we shopped on Wednesday. So that was exciting: our produce was grown about 4 blocks from where we bought it. It doesn’t get a whole lot more local than that!

Me and a baby goat.

Goats on an upside down bathtub.

One of the kittens. Notice its size in proportion to its food bowl. It wasn't much bigger than my palm.

Chickens

Part of the garden

Jody, myself and Emily at Lee Falls.

And this is a dead snake that was being eaten by yellowjackets which I just thought was kinda cool because they'd made such a perfect little hole in it. Gross, I know. But cool.

I guess anything can be gay these days

Hmm. Semi-colons have long been my very favorite method of punctuation. Seems that maybe there’s a reason….