Mason and Kissa
The transition back to two cats is going fairly well--save for the part where Kissa now refuses to eat anything other than Mason's spendy prescription food (binkin, you're getting a BUNCH of nutro max for your babies when you come to visit, if you want it), and the part where Mason patrols the house all night long trilling to his babies.

This morning, he absolutely DEMANDED to be let into the guest room, I think on the assumption that he'd find Tamarind and Lychee in there. He didn't, of course, and he made his displeasure known, walking up to me, giving a big yowl and popping me twice, claws in, on the leg.

As for me, I was busy this weekend with finally going to the gym that I joined several weeks ago, cleaning out the garage, enjoying several fabulous meals with a beautiful woman and having long, lovely online chats with someone far away who's going to visit soon.

Exhaling
The good: I think this morning brought things to a close with turtle--I have my stuff, she has her stuff.

The bad: Her stuff includes Tamarind and Lychee, who I heard howl all the way down the block as her dad drove away with them in their carrier.

It's just Mason, Kissa and me again, and I predict that it will be so for a long time to come.

Yesterday: The good and the just plain weird
The Indigo Girls played here last night--alas, concert tickets are just not in my budget right now, but I wasn't TOO sad because I've seen them eleventy billion times and I know there will be other opportunities.

Imagine my delight when I found out they were also doing a free mini-set at a nearby bookstore. I had lunch plans with the (former?) Nueva Cantora blogger and her lovely husband, so we bagged those in favor of a little Amy and Emily love.

Imagine my shock and massive head shaking when TOAD showed up. Not turtle. Toad. The woman who hated the Indigo Girls so much when we were together that I went to their concerts alone.

Just weird.

On the Small Friends
They're growing up. I mean, of course they are, but I'm amazed at how wonderful it is to watch them while they do so and I feel so honored to be part of it. They're now almost 14, 10, 8 and 7--I've known all of them for about 7 years, except for the 14 year old who I've known a bit longer.

Small Friend O is 10 and Small Friend H is 8 and they both have gmail accounts, and one of the best surprises for me is to be chatted by them. They're totally hilarious and love the emoticons most of all.

Small Friend H chatted me today while I was at work and she was at home enjoying some downtime during spring break. We were emoticon-ing back and forth when, sort of out of the blue, she said, "So, how's life?"

And I grooved and got just a little bit melancholy that this little girl who I used to feed off of the edge of my plate while she opened her mouth like a bird is now asking me such grown-up questions.

Makin' plans
I'm working on scheduling a trip to see Tali soon. How geeked am I?

On Easter

We praise you, O God, whom eternity cannot contain, for coming to earth and entering time in Jesus. We praise you for his life which informs our living, for his compassion which changes our hearts, for his clear speaking which contradicts our harmless generalities, for his disturbing presence, his innocent suffering, his fearless dying, his rising to life and breathing forgiveness and restoring us forever to you.

I had no idea how hard it would be to be so sad on Easter.

On the way home from church, I sang this, by Carrie Newcomer:

Here I am without a message
Here I stand with empty hands
Just a spirit tired of wandering like a stranger in this land
Walking wide-eyed through this world
Is the only way I've known
Wrapped in hope and good intention and
Bare to the bone

There is nothing I won't show you
There is nothing I can hide
I've risked it all and dreamt it all
And seldom questioned why
You took me in when I was hungry
When my spirit ached and groaned
Laid wide open and defenseless
And bare to the bone

When I rise, I rise in glory
If I do, I do by grace
Time will wash away our footprints
And we'll leave without a trace
Between here and now and forever
Is such precious little time
What we do in love and kindness
Is all we ever leave behind

When my eyes are slowly fading
When the light is softly waning
When the evening sun is setting
And the world is barely breathing
Then your voice will call me
And your hands will lead me home
Like a newborn awed and naked
And bare to the bone

When I rise, I rise in glory
If I do, I do by grace
Time will wash away our footprints
And we'll leave without a trace
Between here and now and forever
Is such precious little time
What we do in love and kindness
Is all we ever leave behind

Here I am without a message
Here I stand with empty hands
Just a spirit tired of wandering
Like a stranger in this land
Walking wide-eyed through this world
Is the only way I've known
Wrapped in hope and good intention and
Bare to the bone

Yesterday was a very good day
It didn't start out that great--I had a rough night, filled with dreams in which I was trying to dial 911 and hearing a recording, "You must dial the area code before dialing this number," then doing that and getting the recording, "This number is no longer in service. Please try your call again."

I met the pronoia blogger and her fabulous partner for lunch as they were on their way from point B back to point A. She and I have been reading one another's blogs for who knows how long (neither of us, as we've had that conversation). We landed on an email list together and started chatting via gmail, which we do most days. We'd talked on the phone, once, when she read my cards around Yule.

I was ridiculously nervous and for no reason at all. It was like meeting old friends for the very first time. There was much laughing and wonderful food and with the possibility that in a few years we'll live closer to each other, I have no doubt we'll be seeing one another again.

I spent much of the afternoon sorting through the stuff from turtle that I'd chosen to keep, figuring out what needed laundering, what needed to be put away, and taking photos of the few things that I've got for sale. The room that was hers is nearly empty, now, and today I'm cleaning it and setting it up as a guest room.

Late in the afternoon, I went to the annual Extended Village Pysanky Egg Making Party where, as always, my eggs paled in comparison to those made by others (Small Friend H in particular is just ROCKIN' these eggs--she made one with flamingos on it that's totally cool), H asked me if I remembered the time I dropped and broke the egg she'd made (um, yep), and I reconnected with some people I don't seen all that often, as well as people I see regularly.

I didn't make it to church yesterday, which is a first for me in...well, certainly since I started attending regularly again, which is more than a decade. I found other ways to be with God, and that's enough.

Groove of the day (so far)
One of my efriends named a new kitten after me. Frogger. :)

The three-word prayers
God, be here.

God, help me.

Wrung out but propped up
This weekend was weird and complicated and blessed and inspiring, all at once.

My therapist has been suggesting I go to Al-Anon for, oh, you know, like a decade. I saw her on Friday and when I told her that I planned to go on Saturday morning she, who has never so much as shaken my hand in all that time, jumped out of her chair and hugged me, then apologized profusely, though I assured her that it was fine. I'd been toying with the idea on and off for years and have been making concerted efforts for months but just could not do it. Once there, I was a damn mess. And later, too. But I'll go again and I think it will be good for me.

Saturday afternoon, I met my friend, J, at his house for lunch, to meet the lovely newish woman in his life, and to benefit dramatically from the fact that he's selling his house and moving to a condo. He gave me all kinds of yard-related stuff AND a gorgeous patio set with a huge glass table, many chairs and an umbrella. I'm renting a truck and picking it up next Saturday.

After that, I met ANOTHER friend J for a beverage and catching up. She's post break-up, too, and it was good to reconnect and touch base on everything.

But the really big thing is that this afternoon, my friend davi drove an hour each way to help me deal with bags and bins and boxes of crap that turtle left at my house last week. She's royally pissed at me and things are just bad--like, I don't even want to talk about them on the blog, they're so bad. In any case, she returned everything she'd bought while we were together, everything I made for her, everything I'd ever given to her. She returned things I didn't know she had (most notably and weirdly, love letters from a former girlfriend). I went through one bag of stuff on my own and totally lost my shit. davi offered to come for the afternoon and help me sort through everything and that's just what we did. The food (yes, she returned food) that I can use I've put away. What I wouldn't use but davi would went home with her. The rest of what I won't use is packed up to go to the food shelf. There are six huge garbage bags of trash at the curb. There were I don't know how many bags of stuff that davi took to the thrift store. There's a pile of stuff I'm keeping because I can use it. There's a closet full of stuff I'm offering for sale for cheap. davi took a huge bag of clothes home that her family can use, as well as several pairs of Keen and Columbia shoes in excellent condition (yes, she returned the shoes she bought when we were together). She took the sarongs that I'd given to turtle as gifts because she can use them at her baby-wearing group to demonstrate ways to make slings and wraps and because I just couldn't bear to keep them.

There's also stuff I'm not sure what to do with--I'm not going to pitch or donate her family photos, but I have those and other things I know are important to her, so I'm boxing them and putting them in the attic for now.

There's still more stuff I've made no decisions about. But it's a start and I'll take it.

This post brought to you by grief and brandy
Scene: frog and friend at a local bar with a table full of friends and their friends and whoever. I'm sitting across from my friend and between two guys--one of them I'm talking to about who makes the best cocktails in town, the other I'm ignoring because he hasn't said anything at all, not even when I ask him direct questions. He's on my right.

Players: frog and The Guy To Her Right

TGTHR: So, when did you start to find me unattractive?

frog: Oh. Probably around the time you were born with a dick. Sorry.

Oops.

Letting go
Today, my 19-year-old work-study student brought her ultrasound photo to show me her "baby." She's due in November and she's very excited about being pregnant, despite being very young, very much on meds that are not great for pregnant women (or their passengers), and very much in lust with the baby daddy, who's an unemployed drug addict (full-on, active drug addict, no recovery at this time, though he's been in and out of rehab).

Before last week, the last time I'd been suicidal I was 19 years old. I spent about 18 months doing little more than laying on my back in my dorm room, smoking cigarettes and drinking Mountain Dew (and, no, the parallels to my life now do not escape me) and looking at the ceiling and talking to Catherine and listening to Ann Reed. But I've done therapy, years of therapy. I've been on meds. I've been a functional member of society for a long time. I hadn't thought about killing myself in almost two decades.

And then I did. I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. I planned it out. I knew what I wanted to do and when. I gathered together what I needed to make it happen and made a list of what I needed to buy that I didn't already have in the house. I made a list of people I should send an email to, saying good-bye and apologizing for not being enough, for not having enough to put one foot in front of the other and keep on living this life, which had gotten so heavy and oppressive and sad that I couldn't conceive of the possibility of hope ever being in me again, must less joy.

When I didn't do it, when I called my doctor instead and asked for help, when I started talking about it online here and elsewhere, it was because I couldn't do this to Tali, to the Small Friends. I know what it's like to carry the legacy of suicide. I know the questions you ask yourself, the thoughts about whether if you'd done this or that, or not done this or that, if it would have mattered, if you could have saved him, if she could have just held on until she saw the hope again.

Last year at this time, I was at my cousin's funeral. My extended family had gathered together and I left before they said the rosary because all these years--14 of them--after William shot himself, I still can't say the rosary without totally losing my shit. And, while that's appropriate and fine in a funeral home, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The following morning, my mom knocked on our hotel room door to tell me that my Uncle Frank had died, that the call had come in while they were praying for Missy.

Last night I talked to my cousin, the one who's a priest, the one who's also gay, the other one who's left from the Triumverate of Gay in our family. He presided at Uncle Frank's funeral and he's the one who held me when I cried for our uncle. He's the one who gave voice to the fact that Uncle Frank was a staunch Republican who loved the hell out of him and me, even though we were living a life he didn't totally understand. I told him about my grief, I told him how things had been going of late with turtle, I told him that last week it was all I could do not to give in to the dark and just quit all of it, forever.

Then I told him that I know that I cannot parent. I can't do it to myself, I can't do it to a child. I can and do and will love the hell out of the kids that I have in my life, but as long as I know there's even a chance that I'll balance on that line again, I cannot parent.

And while I'm indescribably sad, I know that I'm right.

A personal note to mischevium
I don't know how to contact you other than here, having gotten my ass banned at that site where we were together for so long. You are in my prayers and in my heart. When you are ready, please email me at frogblogger at gmail dot com.

And know that you are loved.