From the archives

While you were "wasting time", God still knew you, loved you, and had faith in you. He was with you the entire time and, when he called you to him, you came. God knew you wouldn't be who you are today if you weren't who you were then, and that's why he waited.

We have lots of cats and they all have distinct personalities and are three of them are, and then there’s Elvis. 

He’s super friendly to strangers and really loving and is a find companion if you understand that, when you’re both languishing on sofa, casually stroking his fir, at some point he will carve DONT TOUCH THE FUR in your peace bubble when he's done with your stupid hand things.  His weapons are sheathed though, always, and he’s fine if he can live in you. Just not the other way around. 

Elvis also can’t eat more than spoon at a time of his expensive elvis only food, provided as its the only thing he can eat without yarping, as long as it’s teeny portions a bazillion times a day. This is of course highly inconvenient and wildly expensive as his special twee food only comes in minuscule and expensive cans. Eight of them a day. If you try and switch him to another Big Tin brand or, god forbid, dry food, he can detect an atom of it in his ridiculous  He’s still wildly underweight though and constantly hungry and is very vocal about that.  He won’t hurt anything aside from your sanity but there is no doubt he's done, DONE (I tell you etc) with your Not Yet, Asshole food restriction bullshit so FEED ME. 

So yesterday I spent thousands of dollars to investors his idiot stomach and found out, what his, it’s furballs, scads of, that the vet observed but didn’t remove (wtf??)  for Levi’s was prescribed daily fur stripping (of my idiot car with the shortest of short fur so wth is up wit’ dat?) to which I replied, have you even MET Elvis?? And why didn’t you just removed the furballs while you were very expensively knee deep in his stomach with an endoscope?! His response was to lend me a fur stripper and wish me luck.  

ANYWAY  

After removing mostly his dignity via  repeated and otherwise fruitless enraged kerfuffles, I did discover - much to his joy - that when held down and firmly at the neck scruff point, that like most cats, Elvis goes all I'm A Kitten! I'm Being Carried! It's All Good! even when his laser beam eyeballs are saying I HATE THIS AND ITS YOUR FAULT and, job done. Fur stripped. Once. Im not sure enough Xanax exists in the world to repeat this EVER, much less daily, but our own stripper should arrive soon (that sounds interesting 🧐) so we can all enjoy this trauma together regularly and soon. I can't wait. Which is a LIE. 

Addendum; When I collected Elvis yestersay, The vet said, oh, we should have stripped his fur while he was here, and my aggressive little thought bubble was all YA THINK?!

Re depression

To be clear, I’m not depressed. My life does life suck though, unbelievabley, but maybe what helps me through the relentless suckinness might help, for an instant at least, your life sucking depression. 

It helps me to think of life as a series of moments. Of instants strung together that make our life - and when you think of an instant, a single solitary instant, it's perfect. Exquisite. No fear, no worry, no pain. So much can happen and also so little the moment the phone rings and you see it's someone you love. When your dog spots you after a day away from her. When you were handed your firstborn, and again your second. The moment you heard your husband say I do. Those things. Even in the midst of the dark, there is beauty in how dark it is. Sorrow and grief are only so because of love and belonging so the foundation of our depression is often based in something we valued and maybe even still have. When it's dark, it's hard to see the light, but it's there so let it spill into the moments that string together the next seconds, hours, minutes, days for it's these precious snapshots in time that make up our precious lives.  Xx

Thats not to trivialise your depression. I want to make that clear. Carving your life up into manageable split seconds of time that carry no fear, no pain, no doubt, but that stil do exist and are real, can feel like a life buoy though when you feel you're drowning in despair.