no, the day wasn't horrible, except for...

I so want to be able to say that yesterday sucked. In fact it did not. I got a lot of work done, received a compliment from someone I love, and my house is clean (well, until Astarte horked up this morning's gooshy fud onto the living room carpet). I even fell asleep at a reasonable hour for me and slept well, waking up briefly at 3am and realizing I fell asleep on the sofa, didn't care enough to get up to move into my bed, and going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I even ate well.

So what's the problem? What made the day seem like complete suckage (yeah, that's a word)?

My cat died. I had to be a grown up and admit she was going to die and that I needed to make this as painless as possible for her.

And I had to do it alone.

Did I really have to? No, probably not. But her other mom and I don't really want to see much of each other and she didn't seem interested in coming with me when I discussed it with her a couple of weeks ago. So I didn't ask because I didn't want to face that rejection.

Yes I have loves and people who would have been there to hold me or talk to me. No I just couldn't get to that space. I could barely get to the place of admitting that yes, she was dying, and might possibly be in pain, and the only thing I could do for her was to end her life humanely. 

So I took her to the vet. I'd waited long enough that she was too dehydrated for us to find a vein. Alternate method number two worked and she died peacefully in my arms. The last thing she did was purr at me. But then all the cats I've sent to the rainbow bridge have purred at the very end. They must know we do it out of love for them. Or so I'm telling myself and don't anyone tell me different.

Kali was named so because she was a pretty grumpy and most definitely feral kitten. I wouldn't agree to name her Bat for her bad attitude, so I named her after the goddess of storms and rages. We coexisted for about a year. I broke up with Rita and moved into my own place. And one day I woke up to feel a presence on my hip. It was Kali. She'd finally decided that I was her human. Her only human. She tolerated other people but I was hers. If you have never been loved by a feral cat, you've missed out on something amazing. When they finally love, they do so with everything they have and more.

Kali took taking care of me seriously. She'd yowl whenever I got into the shower because I was in that WET place. She completely bitched Pam out for not getting me out of there and then stomped off with the attitude of, "what good are you?" If you've never seen a cat stomp, it's actually quite amusing to experience. But don't laugh. They get really mad if you laugh. She was assiduous in making sure that all my clothes and accessories were appropriately marked (no, not peeing) so that everyone knew that I belonged to her. When I was in pain from my lumbar injury, she'd cuddle me. When I felt overwhelmed by school, she sat on me or in front of me on a book or blocking the computer so I would take a break. 

She had to have had some Siamese in her very mixed genetic heritage because she could out-yowl purebred Siamese when she put her mind to it. Her mom was a black and white tuxedo cat. Kali looked like a Maine Coon. The smallest Maine Coon you've ever seen, but very much a Maine Coon. Her normal voice was in keeping with a Maine Coon. They are usually HUGE cats with tiny meepy little voices. She was, at her biggest, 8 pounds.

She was my companion. My relationship with her has been the longest of my life. She blessed me in more ways than I can count or recount. And of the two of us, I think I was the luckier by far. Thank you Kali for coming into my life. May you return to me as the Goddess wills. Until then know I miss you.

confusion

Oh dear Gods, how did I become Miss Popularity? I mean this quite seriously. If you'd told me two years ago I was going to have to plan out the next week by Tuesday the week before and share my calendar with at least six other people, I'd have said you were nuts. But here I am, two years later living a life I am not sure I ever imagined. Well, maybe imagined but most certainly never really thought this might happen.

So, let's backtrack a bit. It's December 2006. I weigh 376 pounds and stand 5' 3". I'm short, fat, and completely sexless. How so? Society strips fat girls of their sexuality and make them friends, sisters. Sure, sometimes similar things happen to men, but it seems to always happen to women. Anyway, I decided to have weight loss surgery - Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. I chose to permanently change my digestion to give me the tool for successful and long-term weight loss. And on 12/26/2006 I did just that.

And it worked. Well, mostly. I'm still considered obese but I lost about 200 pounds and have been pretty successful at keeping it off. Most of the time I really don't care that I'm not a size six. I'm a comfortable 14-16 and I love that I can wear dresses and heels and buy clothes off the rack that fit more times than they don't. I shop in thrift stores and count myself lucky to be able to walk and move, and stretch, and lift weights, and all those things that most people get to do and never think about it.

Here's the odd thing. And it's something I heard from almost all of the other women. We lost weight and regained our sexuality and gender. People saw us as women; as sexual beings. And we were confused. I can't tell you how many times we discussed in support group how weird this felt and how we were confused at how to respond. And as time passes, I remain confused.

How did this happen? How did I become Miss Popularity? Who needed either a paper calendar color coded to keep my social life straight or the integration of a Google calendar shared with at least six other people.
And synched to my (new) Android phone so I can keep track of stuff.

When my 40s started, I was married to a lovely woman, who was perfectly nice, if you define nice as conventional and straightforward. And not one for a lot of sex. Yeah, we had a great and emotionally intimate relationship, but not a sexual one. One day my sex drive woke up. One thing led to another and we ended up splitting up. I decided to embrace the lifestyle that I wanted - the polyamorous lifestyle. And I did.

It started out simple enough.I started having an emotional and physical relationship with a married man. Yes, his wife knew and gave her full support to us. We are still seeing each other. Then I started seeing Erika. And Will. And Lloyd. No, I don't see all of these people still. Erika is happy with her girlfriend and trying to be monogamous. Will, although a lovely man, is just someone with whom I'm pretty casual with and meeting Lloyd kind of pushed him out of the scene for me. Then I started seeing Mark and Brittany (yeah, lots of Marks in my life) with our plan to merge households and try building a tribe, a family unit, something. And that doesn't count Joseph, David, and Ellen, not to mention my sisters in my coven, and other friends like Holly. And I still have a bunch of folks emailing me on OK Cupid. Before I commit to any date, I need to check in with my Google Calendar to make sure I'm not already committed to seeing someone else.

Oh, dear Gods, how did this happen? On one hand I love the attention from Mark, Lloyd, and Mark and Brittany. Not to mention the attention from David and Joseph and anyone else who wants to meet me. But it's still just wildly confusing that I went from wallflower to Miss Popularity. Lloyd says that I deserve lots of love and sex and good times because I'm awesome. It's so hard to believe sometimes. And yet it's constant that people are attracted to me and want to be near me.

Wow.