Some More Background...The Winter from Hell (A Very, Very Cold Hell)

So let me back up a bit to this past winter:  It's December and my baby, Milo, just turned two years old.  I loved that age with both of my older boys, no terrible two's there.  But one week after his birthday, on the night of my oldest son's winter concert, a terrible accident occurred involving said two year old, a door, and the cat.  We all heard the door slam.  Thought nothing of it, really.  The kid had been slamming the door for the past half hour.  I walked into the dining room and  thought I had found one of the cat's mousies, a little rabbit fur covered cat toy, but when I picked it up I noticed blood and flesh hanging from it.  Yes, what I was actually holding was the tip of the cat's tail.  

We found the cat, and I  rushed him to the emergency vet who was completely unfazed by this accident...happens all the time apparently.  (Not to me it doesn't.)  Somehow I managed to get back in time for the concert and was able to send off an email that night to my son's teacher asking to excuse him from homework that night because his cat was undergoing a partial tail amputation.  (And once again I was that crazy parent.)  I did not get a response to that email and will probably find it on Facebook one day as part of a list of poor excuses bad parents have sent in for not helping their kids finish their homework. 

We had to cancel all plans to see my family so we could stay  home and nurse the cat.  I don't live by my family and since my grandmother passed away 4 years ago, we hardly ever see each other.  Christmas is the one time we all try to make plans to get together.  I'm not particularly close to my family, but when you lose all connection with them, you feel a bit, well, disconnected with the world.  This got me down.

Then right before Christmas break we all came down with strep throat.  No big deal, except that it never left our house for the next three months.  One of us was always sick.  And then came the Polar Vortex.  I have never been so cold for so long in my life.  That got me really down.

Back to the cat...he recovered after a few weeks from his surgery, but entered into a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/depression for cats.  He refused to leave our bedroom except to go to the bathroom, and even then if walking the four feet to the bathroom seemed too overwhelming, he'd just crap on our bed, our new comforter and all.  He'd also developed that phantom limb syndrome, sort of.  He'd sit and stare at his tail, or the part that was missing, and he'd just stare and stare and stare, and then BOLT, like he could outrun the terrible accident he fell victim to and when he'd look around again the inch and a half of tail that had been chopped off would suddenly appear.  Well, this just made me sick.

So I'm in the middle of one of the worse winters ever, cut off from family, with a crappy job, sick kids, and a PTSD cat.  My dissatisfaction with my situation in life has been with me for quite some time, especially since losing my adult high school job.  I don't particularly care for where I live and in the ten years we've been here haven't made any real friends, friendly acquaintances yes, but no real friends.  The depression hit hard.  

We went into survival mode, depressed and cold, shuttling kids back and forth to doctors and pharmacies, taking turns to go and lie with the cat so he wouldn't feel alone and shit on our bed, and that's about all I remember.

New Year's resolutions were completely pointless, but come the end of January I felt I needed to do something, SOMETHING!, to shake things up a bit, and that's when I decided to pick up Anne of Green Gables.  (I know, I'm so wild and daring.)  Anne of Green Gables is one of my favorite books and L.M. Montgomery one of my favorite authors.  I've read everything she's ever written.  Her books take me to a simpler world.  If Anne of Green Gables was comfort food, it'd be the gooiest baked macaroni and cheese with sweet stewed tomato topping you have ever eaten.  I felt so good and comforted while reading it that I decided to make a Valentine's Day resolution and reread as many of my favorite books in the next year as I could.

It was a small gesture on my part and far from life changing, but at least for the fifteen to forty minutes before falling asleep at night, I could pick up something that had been good to me in the past and would be good to me again with great certainty.  It got me to the summer, which is bringing me closer to my new project, but I have a two and half year old pulling at my arm right now saying he's hungry and there's no telling what this kid is capable of, so I'm going to go make dinner.  Until next time!