Monthly Archives: August 2011

cats

Scaredy Cat vs. Curious Cat

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“Curiosity killed the cat!”

“Oh you’re just a scaredy cat!”

I’ve heard those two sayings all my life, never really pondering how they contradict each other… until I’ve found myself living with one of each:

Scaredy Cat

007: Silly kittyOh my sweet, sweet Bailey. Never have I known a more gentle and loving cat. I don’t know if he even knows how to use his claws to scratch in defense or malice. He just want to love and be loved.

And he also just wants to hide at the drop of a hat. He is my Scaredy Cat. Sometimes, despite his want to be loved, he’ll run and hide even when you just try to reach down to pet him!

When we have company, it’ll take hours before he’ll venture out to even peek around the corner at these strangers who have invaded his space. When we go out of town and ask a friend to “check the cats for us” we often hear that they just hope Bailey is okay, because, “I didn’t see him at any time I was there.”

His favorite place to be is under our bed. For hours and hours and hours at a time. If he happens to be curled up in his cat bed in our bedroom, and I go in to just get something off my dresser, he’ll BOLT under the bed before I can even say, “Oh, Hi Bai–.”

He is my sweet little scaredy cat.

Curious Cat

SmokeyOh. My. Goodness. Rascally Smokey is curious cat to the -nth degree. He IS a mischievous child.

His newest curiosity is my closet. It’s up high, with a seperate cubby for my shoes on the bottom. I open my closet to get a shirt, and he leaps up inside… we spend ten minutes of me pulling him out, going back for a shirt, only for him to leap back in again. It usually results in my having to kick him completely out of the room to get dressed.

He wants to climb inside of dresser drawers, and he’s already once been locked in the bathroom for hours on end because I didn’t know he’d gone to lay behind the toilet while I showered.

The freezer is of particular interest as well. I go for ice and he wants to climb in and investigate (the freezer is on the bottom of our refrigerator). I go to close the door, and instead of getting out of the way, he tries to just climb up on a shelf. Frozen curious cat, anyone?

He climbs. He jumps. He pushes his boundaries. When guests come over, he is ready to climb in their lap and get to know them. I think he thinks his name is, “No!!” or “Stop it!!”

My crazy, crazy curious cat.

husband, work

Coordinating schedules

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A big reason why I want to make writing and photography happen for me as a career (outside of a sheer love and passion for them) is that I love the personal flexibility it provides me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know I have to stay focused and on-task to be successful. However, I like being able to be at home when my husband is home.

Right now its touring season, and my husband is on the road more than he’s at home. A fact we are both extremely thankful for, and a fact I strive to work around as much as possible. On his few days at home, I want to be able to move my projects around to step away from the computer and sit on the front step with him watching fireflies, listening to the high school band in the distance.

I like to sleep later than usual, when he’s at home. My rush to get up and start the day disappears for a few days. I’d rather snuggle down and stay where he is for another hour… or two. If he has a meeting to be at, I like to tag along… even if I just sit in the car and people watch, waiting for him to come out.

In the same breath, even when he’s tired from the road and wants to go to bed “early,” he’ll push forward awhile so we can go to bed at the same time. If I have a meeting of my own, he too tags along. He’s always game to any hair-brained idea I may have for us to go do, “Just to get out of the house for awhile.”

We strive hard to coordinate our schedules when we are both at home, knowing the hours together are precious before I’m dropping him back off at the bus to head to another show in another state.

Sometimes… sometimes we aren’t too successful. Take tonight, as I write this. I am trying to keep my schedule a bit “off” for upcoming nights working downtown in a bar. My husband, however, has a session bright and early in the morning. So in an odd move, he went to bed hours ago while I sit doing some work on the computer. In the morning, he’ll get up and head into town, while I snuggle back down under the covers for a few more hours of sleep.

As always, we are thankful for the work. Oh, once in a blue moon, I get a little grumbly, wanting more time together than working, but it never lasts too long. I quickly remember that work is what we prayed to get, and work is what we are thankful to have. We make the most of our time together, and I aim to continue to be able to do that. I don’t want to be ships passing in the night, if I can at all help it.