Surprise.

The completely unsolicited advice from a fellow gym goer this morning:

“A good tan will take care of those stretchmarks, honey.”

Um.

Okay then.

While I APPRECIATE the assvice…

… maybe next time, just a smile and a “good morning” will suffice.

I can’t do it.

So Baby O is VERY adventurous. He crawls everywhere. Gets into EVERYTHING.

About 6 weeks ago we installed a safety gate between Puck’s litter and the rest of the kitchen. And usually we’re good at keeping it shut when Baby O’s awake and puttering around. But as soon as he leaves the kitchen? We have to open it.

Because Puck WILL NOT jump over it to get to his litterpan. In fact, he’d rather pee on the foyer landing instead ANYWAY.

So today I was at work, and the sinking feeling hit me.

I hadn’t opened the gate when Baby O and I had left the house.

On my lunch break, instead of eating, I drove home so I could encourage the fool cat to pee in his litterpan. Or at least, remove the obstacle so that he COULD pee in his litterpan if he wanted.

He had already gone, of course. On top of the tinfoil we left on the landing carpet. Which, you know, fine. I screwed up, and he doesn’t need any more encouragement to pee there. It’s his favorite place. My bad, my bad.

So I cleaned it up.

And as I was cleaning it… I discovered ANOTHER SPOT. Where he’s clearly been going for a WHILE now. The one place not covered by foil, because it was under a plantstand.

Fuck.

It’s no better.

Yeah, we can add more litterboxes. Yeah, we can rip out the not-even-two-year-old-carpet and replace it with hardwood. Yeah, we can give him kitty Prozac and more attention and try and make him feel better about the fact that there’s a baby in the house.

But. He’s TWELVE YEARS OLD. And this has been going on for more than a YEAR now.

It’s NEVER going to get any better.

So I called J. And, in the heat of the moment, I told him that I was going to advertise on pet.finder dot org and crai.gslist to see if we could find another home for him.

Puck’s unhappy. WE’RE unhappy. I wish I could say that I’m okay with him peeing in my house. I’m not. I’m really not. I’m TRYING to be okay with it, to make my peace that he’s 12 years old and I signed up for all of his life. I’m TRYING to love him anyway, because he’s part of the family.

But I’m not okay with it. I wonder EVERY DAY when I’m going to step in the next puddle of cat pee. I look in his litterbox EVERY DAY to see if he actually went in there.

But then tonight I went to put an ad up. I went as far as establishing a new email address in order to do it. And I sat there, with the pet.finder website up, and tried to find the words to post so that he could find another home.

And I can’t fucking do it.

I can’t give him away.

Because he’s supposed to be part of the family. Because I always got mad at the people who would put their animals in a shelter when they had kids, because they couldn’t commit to being a pet owner through good and bad. Because I always said I’d put my cat down when he’s in pain, and he’s not. He’s healthy. His bloodwork is totally normal. His urinalysis has come back completely normal. EVERY TIME.

Because he’s my cat. And I love him.

And I don’t know what to do. I hate living like this. I wonder what’s going to happen when we take up all the carpeting in the house – because that’s what we’ve been doing. Will he pee on our bed?

I wonder. Where is my breaking point? How much is enough?

Argh.

Man.

Back in the day, I thought I knew what busy meant. During my busy time at work, I’d pretty much just work. And J would take care of everything else – laundry, dinners, etc – because he had the time.

I had no idea what BUSY was.

It’s nuts at work right now. The auditors are in, and they’re asking me for stuff every hour, and I’m working to generate the stuff they need every hour, and then it’s 5pm and I NEED to go home so I can see my baby before he goes to bed. And then I go home and we eat dinner and wash sippy cups* and a stinky baby and do dishes and laundry. And then it’s time for bed. And I do it all over again.

This is quite possibly the first time in my life where I have more work to do than the time to actually do it. Mostly because I can’t just work late anymore and trust that J will take care of the other stuff in our life. Because, see, HE’S busy at work now too. We’re equals, and that means that I have to hold up my end of the bargain when it comes to stuff at home too.

*sigh*

Anyway. That’s a very long excuse for why I haven’t posted in a while. I literally can’t find the time, even though I THINK about my posts on my commute to work. If I had a life administrative assistant, I’d dictate my blog posts to him** and then he’d post them for me.

Doesn’t work that way, I guess.

Not much to report, anyway, beyond the fact that work is kicking my ass. My running is going really well – focusing on distance instead of time has made it mentally easier to run faster and harder than I EVER have, even when I was running during our treatments. I have been managing 9-10 minute miles on the treadmill, and 10-11 minute miles when I run outside. (Which, frankly, has only been three times. Not going to lie to you, running outside is WAY different than being on a treadmill.)

I am also starting to make peace with this body of mine. I haven’t LOST any more weight – I’m pretty stymied at 12lbs lost. But I’m two full pants sizes down from what I was, and the running makes me remember I have MUSCLES underneath all the varicose-marbled cottage cheese that make up my thighs right now.

And I’m starting to realize that my body will never be like the way it was before Baby O. My boobs are bigger (and um saggy too. WTF?). My hips are wider. I have stretchmarks. And a c-section scar, with some loose skin over my belly.

But the more I run, the healthier I FEEL, and the better I feel about how I look. Funny how that all works.

So yeah. Another ode to running. But I’m sort of in love with it right now.

Baby O is doing great, too. It’s starting to be really FUN to drop him off at daycare in the mornings now – all of the babies are starting to INTERACT with each other. There’s a gorgeous little girl who smiles and claps every time I come in with Baby O. There’s a little boy Baby O’s age who plays peekaboo on the climber with him. And I hear stories about how Baby O will sometimes lead the room in a naptime mutiny – where he had his poor daycare teacher darting from crib to crib to try and settle the babies down, to no avail.

He’s just so much FUN now.

And I marvel at how far we’ve BOTH come in the past year. Because I distinctly remember being overwhelmed, and tired, and scared that I was screwing everything up last year. I worried all the time. I remember my friend D telling me over and over that I was doing a good job, that I shouldn’t worry, and I never really believed her.

Just amazing, that’s all.

* Grudgingly, Baby O is making the transition from bottles to sippy cups. We’re on all sippies at daycare during the day – which is the important part, because he needs to have sippies in order to move up to the young toddler room in July. But he will have days where he just won’t drink anything until he gets home. I suspect we’re going to have to go cold turkey for him to truly embrace the sippy cup. But I feel bad because he LIKES his bottles. And in my opinion there’s no real rush yet.

** If I had it my way, ‘him’ would equal a gorgeous gay man. In fact, I have one of my particular friends in mind for this role – I tell him all the time that he’d make a fantastic wife. I suppose what I really need is a wife. Hrm.