My Husband the Poet

We have two cats. Nathan is very definite that this does not make us "cat people" just animal people with cats. My family has always had a penchant for strange animal names and when we got our first cat, almost a year ago now, it was near Halloween and she is a black cat, so we named her Hecate, after the Greek goddess of witchcraft. Our other cat is a white male we named Hyperion, mostly for the alliteration and that Hyperion is a Titan of the dawn.

Anyway, that was a very long explanation to come to this point. They were both sitting on the couch today and my husband busted into spontaneous rhyming.

We has two cats on the couch
We has two cats, one's a grouch
We has two cats, one's a slouch
We has two cats on the couch.

For the grouch part, Hecate isn't much of a people cat. And I don't know where he got the slouch part from, Hyperion is very active.

My goals

I'm not usually one for setting hard and fast long-term goals. I don't want to end up at whatever stage the goal is set for and not have accomplished anything. I'm not that much of a masochist. However, Nathan has been offered a job in a neighborhood not far from the one we're living in now. Which is nowhere near where the house we want to buy is.



So we were discussing it and Nathan asked me what I wanted to be doing in the next two to three years and I seriously thought about it. I came up with two things.



1. I am writing a book. I know that sounds cliche since it seems that everyone these days is writing or thinking of writing a book, but I am. Actually, it's mostly written, I'm just working on edits and showing it to my writer's group. So, sometime in the next two to three years I would like to have this book in the hands of either a publisher or an agency and have started on my second book.

2. Nathan and I are going to adopt. We were going to do it this year, like I said before, but at the moment it's being put on the back burner. So, my second goal is that sometime in the next two to three years I would like us to have at least started the adoption process.


There they are, my short-term, long-term goals. They're not much, but I'm excited about them.

Appraisal

Nathan's dad and uncle have decided they want an appraisal done on the house we are looking at. So, the ball seems to be well and truly rolling.

I saw a Mini Cooper today.

If I've never been where I'm going to, chances are high I'm going to get lost on the way, or at least think I've gotten lost. It's a fun sensation that includes fear, anxiety, tears, and near-hyperventilation.

Or at least, it used to. The thing is, my dad is an expert at finding his way and navigating a map. He also absolutely loves Austin MINI Coopers. I went to college three and a half hours from home and on my first time driving back, I didn't recognize where I was and started to panic.

As I was driving along freaking out and beginning to dial the phone, an electric blue MINI Cooper drove by and I thought of my dad and realized everything was going to be okay. I calmed down and started recognizing the landscape around me.

Now, like today, everytime I see a Mini, I think of my dad and suddenly feel better about whatever it is that is bothering me or stressing me out.

How I Hate Driving

My absolute least favorite activity of any typical day is driving. I hated it in Drivers Ed and I hate it now. This wasn't a problem when I worked six minutes from home. It's a big problem now that my commute is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 15.

Unfortunately this makes me very nervous and gives me, if not quite road rage, at least road anxiety. It started to get bad a few months ago and I decided I needed to figure out a way to calm down and be a more courteous driver.

Everytime something happens that makes me nervous or upset, I say three Hail Marys. One for the person who caused my anxiety, that they reach their destination safely. One for me, that I get where I am going safely and one that everyone else on the road gets where they need to be.

I found it has cut down on my anxiety and fear a lot and helped me to understand others dislike the driving experience as much as I.

At home

Apart from not wanting to live in the suburbs anymore the other reason I want to move home is because it wouldn't be a two day event to be able to sit on the couch with my dad and watch the White Sox.

We wouldn't have the leave the cats for the weekend. (We aren't cat people, we just have them because Nathan doesn't believe in inside dogs.)

I could see my parents and in-laws (whom I love) more two days every couple of weeks.

We don't have many friends in where we live and most of Nathan's good high school friends are still in this area.

And there is a much greater chance of randomly running into friends we haven't seen in ages at home.

We could attend the Saturday morning ritual of eating breakfast at the town restaurant more often.

And of course, it would be nice to have a house of our own.

My first jump

I'm not a natural blogger. I look at it as something of a less private, more public journal and I have tried and failed at so many journals in the past this seems a little silly, even to me. But I enjoy reading people's blogs and thought having my own might be fun.

I am a misplaced small-town girl from a moderate family of big families. My husband grew up on a farm and we have been living in an urban setting for the past two years and hating almost every minute of it. So that's where the jumping comes from.

We're working on buying a house back at home. Well, really we're looking at buying part of a house. It belongs to Nathan (my husband)'s parents and aunt and uncle. His aunt and uncle want to sell their part to us and I've been in it a couple of times and loved it.

I've always believed that when you have a major decision to make you think about it, pray about it, ask your patron saint for intercession, and then get to a point where you look at all the possible consequences and all the possible positives of it and just jump one way or the other. Nathan and I decided it was time for us to jump.

This is the only time in my life I have looked back after I jumped. See, we were planning on starting the adoption process this year and if we are approved for the loan on the house we won't be able to afford adoption this year. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems logical to get a house first and then children, but I keep looking over my shoulder.