April is the cruelest month.

Except when April ends, that means May begins and it means that all of the stress that is April is done.

We turned in our old keys tonight and we're in our new place.

I'm flying home for a couple of weeks Monday morning.

Life's a-okay. How about you?

A little more about me.

I'm not a huge meme person, but this one looked really cool. I love a good visual piece, especially when it's quite accurate in capturing an essence of "me."

DIRECTIONS:

- Go to Google image search.

- Type in your answer to each question.

- Choose a picture from the first page.

- Use this website (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php) to make your collage.

QUESTIONS:

1. What is your name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What is your hometown?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. What is your favorite movie?

6. What is your favorite drink?

7. What is your dream vacation?

8. What is your favorite dessert?

9. What is one word to describe yourself?

10. How are you feeling right now?

11. What do you love most in the world?

12. What do you want to be when you grow up?

New digs

My favorite part about moving is making a place my own. Today, I finally feel like the pieces are coming together. We made the decision not to put our bed back together because we don't think we'll be here long enough to justify it, so our mattress is on the floor. It looks really nice, surprisingly, as I also hung one of my tapestries on the pole between the bedroom and the living room. It looks almost like a luxurious get away. 

It's low quality, of course, being from my computer, but you get the idea. 

One of the reasons that I love making a place my own so much is that it gives me a sense of peace. I'm a cleaner when I'm stressed, so having a place that's clean and put together makes me feel less stressed. The summer between my sophomore and junior year in college, I spent a summer living in one of the dorms at Northwestern University since I was a Teaching Assistant for a summer program at the school. I remember one of the other folks staying in the dorm, one of the head administrative people, came into my room one evening and told me that she always loved walking by and peeking into my room because it just exuded calmness and creativity. I thought that was about the best compliment ever -- while the rest of my life may be one grand disaster, at least I live in a cool looking place, right?

BEDA licious.

Listography of the day.

+ My kitty is home

+ We are almost all moved into the new apartment

- I had intentions of leaving awesome comments for my BEDA buddies today, but it didn't happen. It will, ladies

- We have to clean the old apartment still

+/- I am genuinely tired. I have not slept well lately.

- Lamest. Blog. Ever.

Our new addition

Erik came home from work today with our new baby: a mandolin!

One of the guys he works with gave it to us, and it is beautiful. I'm excited to get back on a string instrument. I've a guitar back in the basement in Chicago with a broken string, but I think the mandolin will be a welcomed friend in our household. 

Weekend check-in

We got a dreaded phone call about 12:15 last night about Mason and how he needed surgery immediately; things weren't looking good. After a lot of sweat and stress, they called back half an hour later and said he looked better and they were holding off. Phew! Today he's doing better, but he'll have to be there a bit still. Argh! I'm missing my kitty.

We're trying to get as much moved today as we can but lordy, it's stressful. We've gotten a few loads over and have a few more to go. We're going to take the cat over tonight and let her wander while we do some unpacking. I'm not unpacking entirely, since I'm hoping we really won't be there too long and we'll be back in the midwest.

In happier news, I wanted to share another of my favorite poems. I love Jane Kenyon, and it was this poem that introduced me to her. In 11th grade, we had to do an obscene number of presentations -- which ultimately was good for me -- but one of them was about Thoreau's Walden. We had to choose a poem to recite and tie into our memorization of the famous lines of his piece. I fell in love with this one and tied it into the story of butterfly woman, who lived in the giant redwoods in California.

Killing the Plants 

That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they don't
argue, they don't ask for much,
they don't stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they've been....

I can't summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, of this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water – that's all
they get. I wonder if they suspect

that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves....

The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.

A long Friday and Saturday

My poor little Mason has been sick the last couple of days, throwing up all the time. Last night, we took him to an emergency vet to get him checked out. The techs at this place treated him well, but we didn't think the vet was giving him good options besides just getting an xray (read: $$$). We took him home over night and watched him since he was acting so much better at the vet. 

After he continued being sick, we brought him back in early this morning. The tech knew right away what was wrong -- and it wasn't what they suggested last night. We were immediately told that this was an emergency situation, and among hearing the diagnoses and the problems, we were confronted with a bill the price of a semester's tuition.

We talked it over and went ahead with it. There were a few different potential outcomes, from an overnight and some fluids/iv and medication to a full out surgery complete with anesthesia. Of course, since I'm not employed and Erik makes just enough to pay rent and groceries, we're less than thrilled; however, Mason's my baby and still a very young cat. We'll figure it out.

When we left the vet, I lost it. Being confronted with both the scary news and the scary bill at once is terrifying. 

However, our luck changed after we got home. We decided to go grab lunch to get our minds off it, and on the way there, we got a call from the vet that he was doing amazingly well after she did the first (read: less expensive and scary) testing. I had called home to talk with my mom and apparently one of her cats had the same condition which made me feel a little better (read: we're not bad cat owners). So now knowing he didn't need the surgery was awesome.

I just hung up again with them and he's apparently eating now and doing very, very well. Thank the lords, right? What a scary weekend, with our plans now entirely in the air. 

If all continues going well -- and the vet who helped us this time was very optimistic -- he can come home soon. Even though he's been out of the house only about 10 hours, we miss him, our little butter ball.