lamiki

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and made it to the nice list

Much love,
Laura, John, and Strong Santa

Original artwork illustrated by John Kimball

There’s a cat on my desk and she’s growling at the cat on my floor that is sniffing around and has been worried about her all day. He, the cat on the floor, is about to be attacked by the cat on my desk.

I am in the middle of the battlefield trying to write my third-to-last blog post for National Blog Posting Month and I am dangerously close to turning this blog into a diary.

Damnit.

It’s funny. Again, I’m staring at my content calendar that has been telling me to write a post about the etymology of certain words and I really don’t want to write it. I don’t want to write it because I don’t have my point of view on that post fully thought out. I don’t want to write it because I have another blog post to write that has a more time sensitive publication date that I am (apparently) way more interested in than the deadline of this post that is midnight o’clock.

Isn’t it funny how the thing we want to do is never the thing that we want to be doing?

And Minnie, the cat on my desk, just chased Vito, the cat who is not on my desk. She has chased him because he is in her space – the space formerly known of as my office.

I guess I should be thrilled by this attack. Not because she attacked the Vito but because she’s sick. In case you were wondering, the worst way to start off a post-holiday week is in the veterinary’s office; the same office that put down the first cat that you and your husband and you owned together in your adult life nine months prior. And you’re there, alone, with your new kitty who just this last weekend you convinced your husband that you would like to keep.

No wonder I felt really wonky day today.

Minnie’s an Alpha. She came to us after being abandoned by her previous owners who moved out and literally left her in the house, telling no one. Her human grandma found her. And John found Minnie through a friend-of-a-friend’s Facebook. He saw per big blue eyes and her Siamese mix face and he fell in love.

We didn’t even ask if she got along with other cats before we made the appointment to meet her. That’s when I knew that as soon as we saw her, she’d be ours.

Old Man, may he rest in peace, passed away in April. We still haven’t opened his box of ashes that are sitting on my shelf, three feet from this computer.

Losing a pet opens a wound that never closes.

Old Man left behind a brother, Vito, named after the Godfather but has the personality closer to a teddy bear, likes to cuddle. He’s not an Alpha, though after bringing Minnie into the house, I keep hoping that he will be. As I said, he’s a teddy bear. Non-territorial, likes to show you his belly, and has the largest big green eyes of innocence that I’ve ever seen.

And then there’s Minnie, who was five-and-a-half pounds of fury when we adopted her in June and I’m so Goddamned proud that she’s up to eight-and-a-half pounds today. Cats come to our house to get fattened up.

And Minnie is eating again while Vito watches her from a chair. Which means she has her appetite back. Which means we’ve made progress if she doesn’t get sick overnight.

Tomorrow the vet will call me with results from her blood work. If anything comes back positive, that means that something is really wrong. If it comes back negative than that means that we don’t know why she is sick, but just was.

As soon as Minnie decides she’s finished with her bland, wet food, Vito jumps in to lick her bowl clean, like every good brother should.

Why do we always need to search for the ‘why’?

This year, like every year, has been one filled with ups and downs, events that went down as planned and events that went awry, things that happened for a reason and surprises that revealed themselves at the most opportune times.

Today was perhaps the most perfect Thanksgiving ever. It started by John and I going out last night to the 10pm showing of The Muppets and coming home to finish making Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (thanks to a delicious recipe from Bill the Butcher). Then this morning started by going to CrossFit and doing a team WOD with two of my best CrossFit friends. Participating in today’s WOD was a big deal since I’ve been doing solo workouts and rehabbing my shoulder due to tendonitis and bursitis that I’ve had for a year and a half.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to my in-laws’ house. They were the hosts and we dined with them, my sister-in-law, her fiancé, John, my parents, and a family friend. The feast was complimented by laughter and now I’m home on the couch, blogging, while John and I are watching Harry Potter, which is kind of a tradition in this house.

It was the perfect Thanksgiving Day.

Thirty Reasons to be Thankful

In the tradition of last year, here is what I am thankful for this year:

• John – my support, my rock, my heart
• Building strength, physical and psychological
• New friends
• Old friends
• Friends who have moved from professional to personal friends
• Twitter BFFs and blogging buddies
• You, my reader
• My blog
• My new job
• My old job
• Mentors
• My family – my parents, my in-laws, my sisters, my brothers, my nephew
• Going to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday next week.
• Having control over my own schedule
• CrossFit
• My acupuncturist and my chiropractor
• Celebrating hump day
• Being a writer
• Mustaches
• Hipsters and the hipster-way-of-life
• Dancing, just because we can
• Cooking and baking at home
• Cuddling (even though my husband has dropped 50 pounds in the past year thanks to CrossFit, his hipbones are still fun to cuddle with)
• Listening to my gut
• Putting things in motion
• Not settling
• The ability, drive, and ambition to fix things that aren’t right
• Big ideas, implemented
• Do-ers
• Being comfortable in my own skin and appreciating who I am.

That last one is probably the biggest way to summarize all that has happened so far this year. 2011 has been a “building” year – personally, professionally, physically, and psychologically.

Thank you – for reading and being here; lamiki.com would not be what it is without you.

Thank you.

Now, I’m going to do what I told you not to do yesterday and log off to spend time with the first item on this list.

Apparently I missed the memo that Thanksgiving weekend is National Unplug and Spend Time with Your Family weekend (as reported by multiple bloggers). I’ve written about unplugging before, and it’s definitely something that we all need in this day of electronic calendars, push notifications, and Siri, is that we need people to tell us to unplug.

Well, here’s me, the girl who will be offline and online over the next five days due to her commitment to blogging once a day saying, don’t.

Don’t unplug. Don’t get offline. Don’t respect your friends and family that you only see once a year for the holidays by abandoning Facebook, Twitter, and (gasp!) Google+.

Be that annoying grandkid who texts throughout dinner. Channel that angst that you got over when you graduated from high school and sulk. Check in, obnoxiously, from your mother’s kitchen, the kiddie table, and your grandmother’s punch bowl. Claim the mayorship of Second Thanksgiving. And – for the love of the Internet – tweet.

And when you’re done with your third helping of mashed potatoes and have reached the point of no return after your second dose of pie, poke someone on Facebook.

Now go get that turkey coma on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. Since you’re online, here’s some Thanksgiving fin from The Oatmeal: Thanksgiving as a kid VS Thanksgiving as an adult. Enjoy ☺

Photo Credit: Pam’s Pics-

Last night I went to a show to see one of my favorite bands play. We Were Promised Jetpacks just released their sophomore album and last night was the final stop on their U.S. tour and the first time they were the headliner. Last night was also the third time I saw them play and each time they get better and better.

John and I had an awesome spot on the balcony along the rail and the perfect view of the stage and all of the band members. As we waited for the lights to dim after they cleared the stage and set up the equipment for We Were Promised Jetpacks, I noticed that the stage was very clear and there were five guitars laid out. We Were Promised Jetpacks only has four members. I don’t remember them switching guitars at previous shows like some of the heavy alternative rock shows I went to in high school, but whatever, the lights were dimming and they were coming out.

The drummer, the lead guitarist, the lead singer, and the bass player all came out on stage.

And then came two more.

They started playing – the four men of We Were Promised Jetpacks who I had seen before and two more. They played their radio hit from their second album and then rolled into the song that made them famous (at least in my book) – with five guitars.

Want to know how to impress your customers and turn them into lifelong fans?

Surprise them with what they’re least expecting.

Turns out the additional members came from the opening band, Bear Hands. We only caught the tail end of their set, so we didn’t recognize them. But, man, the whole time they were playing – and again during the finale – it just blew me away.

Whenever I hear their music in the car or on the radio, I feel warm and amazed by their sound. But last night, they just increased my utter respect for them. I have no idea if this was an icing-on-the-cake, only time that these two bands performed together or if they did that set at every show, but I don’t care. The energy that flew out of those guys during that performance started their show off with the right level of bang and exploded into one of the most amazing concerts I’ve attended in awhile.

Was I impressed before? Yes.

Am I even more hooked on them – their music, their product? Absolutely.

And now you are too.