Maude Rides the Short Bus

For as long as I can remember, whenever I share a story of moderate misfortune / infinite craziness, friends and family generally respond with some variation of the following:

"Only you."

I hear it everytime I talk about someone who ran into me on the train; every unusual illness or life-altering traffic jam. Essentially, my life goes a little like this: if it's weird. And it's unlikely to happen (though not entirely impossible)... there's a good chance it will happen to me. I've long accepted this fact, and little by little I've also come to realize that, whenever I bemoan a situation... it gets worse.

It's as if there's some cosmic force out there that demands I handle the punches with a smile; and while this is generally the case, karma bites me in the derriere if I register the least bit of a complaint.

Example: the first day/night of camping, Washington and I were rather displeased with our neighbors: the hyperactive 9-year-old and the screaming infant didn't make for good "peace and quiet." We didn't think it could get any worse.

The next night, we battled with a group of drunks who spoke at the top of their lungs just a few feet away from our tent. We were miserable... much more so than we had been the previous night.

In short: I acknowledged on night one that we couldn't possibly have worse neighbors. But on day two... we did. And as if to further validate my status as a bad luck charm: a 20 minute walk revealed to us that every other section of the campground was completely quiet.

This happens often, and you'd think I'd learn my lesson... But I don't. So when I returned home from vacation with a hideously long "To Do" list, I barely knew where to begin. Laundry. Buy car. Shop for car. Sleep. Call about auto insurance. Maude's distemper booster. Sleep. Upload photos. Edit photos. Pay bills. Groceries. Sleep. Transfer title of old car. Update blogger. Catch up on e-mail. Balance check book.

The list went on. And on. And on. And when I went to work, I discovered that rather than have someone step in during my absence, a backlog of work was left on my desk. So the stress level at work has been on a similar climb.

But I knew one thing, at least: this past weekend was to be dedicated to car shopping. For reasons too boring to explain, I needed to get a new car this weekend... or take care of a load of paperwork on my old one. I'd saved up the money for a decent down payment, and a few car companies were offering 0% financing (all set to expire July 31, of course). So this was to be *the* weekend where I upgraded to a car with air conditionining AND windows that actually worked.

The cosmos had different plans. And I suspect it had something to do with me stressing about how, on earth, I'd ever get everything done.

Suffice it to say my weekend centered around Maude. Or, to put it more simply:



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Yes, that's right. Maude had emergency surgery this past weekend. Sometime Friday afternoon she decided, for reason's I'll never understand, that it'd be a good idea to eat a ponytail holder. Now, prior to this, I'd never heard of cats eating non-food items (not to mention, I don't even know where she found the holder!). But, to quote Maude's vet: "Most cats don't chew things. Some cats do. Yours does."

Maude is like a dog in this regard; I even had to spray "Bitter Yuck" on electrical cords to keep her away from those. But there are some benefits to having a cat-dog, as well: Maude is always waiting on me when I get home from work. She wants to be picked up and held for a bit, in fact, before she'll start playing. She's definitely not the distant sort of cat that views humans solely as food-givers.

That's why I knew something was wrong Friday when I returned home from work, and Maude cried pitifully when I picked her up. Several minutes later, and she was vomiting half a hair band on the floor.

Which begged the question: where was the other half?

But rather than bore you with the details of my Friday... my Saturday... and my Sunday, here's the Cliff Notes version:

Friday night was spent at an emergency animal hospital. Saturday was spent at Maude's actual vet (I got two hours of car shopping in before the vet called with the dreaded news). Sunday was spent at Maude's bed side, tending to a cat who was so sore, she couldn't move to go to the litter box.

And so I say again:



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Or to put it more simply:



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And as frustrated as that makes me, when I was driving home in 110 F weather today in my 10-year-old car — in a car whose air conditioner hasn't worked for years, and whose passenger side window no longer rolls down — I laughed as my sweat-drenched shirt clung desperately to my back.

Nearly everything remained on my initial "To Do" list — it had gotten much longer, in fact. And yet — as miserable as I was breathing in the uncomfortably hot air, worrying about getting home to Maude in time to give her the scheduled kitty morphine fix — I couldn't help but find solace in those universal words of comfort:

"It could've been worse."

Epilogue
I'm posting this entry four days after I began writing it; in that time, I've since learned that one of Maude's brothers was hospitalized this week for eating some sort of cat toy / carpet contraption. Apparently, this unfortunate eating "habit" is genetic. No word yet as to whether or not he'll also require surgery.

Also, a shout-out to Washington, who spent much of last weekend helping me look after Maude.

Photo of Honda Civic, while manipulated by me, was borrowed from Edmunds.