Yes, 2016 has not been a great year for all sorts of reasons. In that sense. John Oliver is right (see below, and definitely not safe for work).
We can’t wait for it to be over either.
Yes, there have been some good things that happened this year. Kelly and I finally have a house of our own, and we love it. Just this past weekend we put up our Christmas tree for the first time in several years. I was smiling from ear to ear. I just couldn’t help myself. As silly as it might seem to some people, putting up the tree in our living room as we listened to Christmas music was one of the most serene and happy moments I have had in a long, long time. It meant the world to me.
Also, there was the addition of little Violet to our family a few weeks after we moved to Winthrop, and we love her very much. She is an absolutely sweet and affectionate little thing and we could not have hoped for a better addition to our little family. She has found all sorts of little places around the house to sleep, and one of my favorite things to do around the new house is to find the new places where she has decided to sit and/or nap.
We spent our Thanksgiving day in New Hampshire at my sister Liz’s house, after picking up my Aunt Donna from her place (also in NH now) and heading over to have Thanksgiving as a late lunch. And we had a pretty good time, all things considered. Luckily, we managed to avoid all discussions of politics.
So yes, while I can’t avoid discussing politics forever, I am going to put off talking about it for a little because I wanted to end this post on a positive note. While I have much to see about current events I will still try to put up some more pictures of the new place, as well as some pictures of all of our furry “kids” together. It is the season for that sort of thing.
Much love to all our family, friends and acquaintances.
After losing Bucky back at the end of May, and then going through the insanity of buying a house and moving, Geoff and I talked about getting another cat. It was especially evident that this was a good idea once we moved in here as this place has a lot of room and Scratch turned into a SUPER cling monster. Yesterday, after searching on multiple websites here and there for a couple of weeks, we went to the MSPCA with a couple of kitties in mind as possible contenders.
Our only criteria was that the cat was female, not a kitten, had lived with other cats, and could get used to other cats. We were not planning on getting a ninja in the bargain.
The extended radio silence around here has been due to several factors. The major factor has been because Geoff and I spent the better part of this summer looking for and then buying a house. (YAY HOUSE!!!!!) Then we had to move.
We had to move ALL the stuff and things. And ALL the books. OMG.
Fifty two years ago tonight, three young men were murdered by a group of white Mississippians in the Ku Klux Klan. Among the men complicit in this crime were members of the Neshoba County Sheriff’s office and the Philadelphia (Mississippi) Police Department.
This was a mere six years before I was born. Many people of my generation are familiar with this event through the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, although the film doesn’t even cover everything that happened that awful summer.
Life is always a mixture of the bitter and the sweet, the dark and the light, the gratitude and grief. I admit that I often focus on the bitter parts to the exclusion of all else. That is in large part due to the fact that a large portion of my 20’s and almost all of my 30’s have been spent dealing with one crisis or another and, last year, dealing with death after death. That, and the way that people treat you, tends to color one’s outlook on the world a bit. Depression doesn’t help either.
That being said, this year is turning out to be one of the best in a long time. Despite losing Bucky last week, things seem to be looking up for us.
Today Geoff and I helped Bucky leave this world and move on to the next. He was 18 years old, and I will miss him every day.
Bucky and Scratch, this was as close as they got to cuddling.
Bucky was born on April 15, 1998. He was born before I graduated from college, in the last century, the last millennium, before Barack Obama became President, before I had my first cell phone, before I had even met Geoff, let alone married him. He was my first child, and he will always be special.
Bucky moved with me through seven different apartments in two cities, he outlived his younger brother Smoky, he tolerated two foster dachshund sisters, an untold amount of visiting dogs of varying breeds (Scarlett, Ivory, Fletcher, Pixie, Jasmine, the list goes on), living with a roommate who had a dog and a cat of her own*, and surviving a 1 1/2 story fall down an uncovered shaft and being pinned inside a wall in the middle of the night**.
Bucky in his less formal wear. In true lord of the manor style, he showed up for meals and when he needed personal grooming. Yep, he was totally an Earl.
Bucky was nearly imperturbable. He was loving and sweet with humans, but he suffered no crap from other animals. When I brought Smoky home from the shelter, at Bucky’s request mind you, and Smoky turned into an unholy terror, Bucky rolled his eyes and we hid in my loft bed and watched the destruction in amicable silence. When Bucky met Rerun he quickly established dominance with a sequence of three closed paw blows to Rerun’s snout that were over nearly before they’d begun. Rerun never forgot that encounter.
Bucky was also an athlete like no other cat I’ve met. In his prime he could jump from a sitting position to over six feet straight up into the air and land on a narrow (maybe 1 inch?) window frame. That moved. Then he’d make another flying leap up onto the next story of our interior courtyard and simply hop windowsill to windowsill and visit the upstairs neighbors. Some of them would leave the windows open so he could come inside and visit. As he was a stellar mouser and the building was, well, infested with mice, his presence was always welcome.
Privacy in the bathroom? Ha!
About a year and a half ago we had noticed that Bucky was starting to lose weight. I fully expected his blood work to come back saying that his kidneys were going. But they weren’t, turns out something was up in his digestive track. Eventually there was a tiny hardening in the area. We kept him on meds for a while, but finally he let us know on no uncertain terms that he just didn’t like the taste. So we switched to prednisolone. He was on it for the better part of 9 months. He was doing fine. The palpable thing in his belly, as of the first week of May, was small, smaller than a dime. He spent Brimfield at the vet’s and came back happy and shiny.
Don’t look up!
Then this week he pretty much stopped eating. And tonight he wouldn’t come when we called for dinner. We went looking for him and found him hiding where Smoky used to hide when he was scared or didn’t want to be pilled. As I’d barely been able to pill him this morning, we knew it was time. The vet graciously stayed open late for us, and we said our goodbyes. I know that he’s with Smoky and Rerun and all of the other furry kids that Geoff and I have had come in and out of our lives so far and I know I’ll see him again. I am at peace with the decision to let him go and I think that the timing was just right. But I will miss him. O Lord, will I miss him.
Bucky came to me from the MSPCA. He was a Phinney’s Friends cat. Phinney’s Friends was, at the time, a program at the MSPCA designed to help people with HIV/AIDS keep their pets while dealing with their disease. Bucky’s human had died and so he was up for adoption. I adopted him in 1999 and he was with me for the rest of his life.
Phinney’s Friends is now a standalone non-profit and it is entirely volunteer run. If you are so inclined, I encourage you to make a donation there in Bucky’s memory or in the memory of a person or animal you love. Without them he never would have come into my life and I would have been all the poorer for it. Also, Phinney’s Friends now has an expanded mission that, especially with the way the economy has been, is more important than ever.
Now cracks a noble heart.—Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
~Kelly
* Bucky got his nickname “Bruiser” while living with that roommate. He got in a spat with her cat over some of her cat’s wet food and bit her cat’s tail. The end of that cat’s tail later fell off. In her owner’s bed. Whoops.
** This is a super long story but I will tell you sometime if you want to hear it. Just not now.
The May edition of Brimfield 2016 has come and gone. We haven’t photographed our purchases yet, that will come later. What we do have are the photos we took as we wandered around. These are the weirdest photos of items we encountered from Thursday-Sunday of last week. And some of them are truly odd. Others reminded us of The Bloggess, so we went ahead and snapped them. For posterity. We did not purchase any of these items.
The weather recently has been a lot warmer, for the most part. It feels like spring is already here. I have been able to wear shorts a few times. Already we are seeing blooms all over.
Just this past weekend, I was thinking about how I should probably go ahead and put away all of my snow shovels, ice melter, windshield scrapers, and other winter paraphernalia. I was also thinking about how I did not use the snowblower once this winter, after using it so much last winter.
Well. I should have realized that the weather in New England always has the last laugh, especially when it comes to winter.
I’ve been thinking for a very, very long time about writing this post. Years, actually. Part of it has been the courage of Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, that’s allowed me to even think about doing it, part of it has been the necessity of living a life that is so controlled by this somewhat hidden part of myself, and part of it is that I feel more and more like I’m lying by not being open.
Truthfully, there’s still a huge stigma. I have lost at least one job because of it. I have family who flatly refused to believe me when I told them. Interestingly, it was an email I received from a friend at Harvard yesterday that made me realize that not only did I want to spread the word about the contents of her email, it was the perfect venue through which I could finally open up and come out of the mental illness closet.
My name is Kelly Hopkins and I am mentally ill. I have Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD.
As most of you know, Geoff and I go out of our way to keep from swearing in this space. This is mostly because this blog is read by our parents and both our mothers have been known to need smelling salts if they encounter too many F-bombs. That being said, we both swear like sailors IRL and, as Geoff has said many times, he learned his particular talent for blue language in Cub Scouts and then basically got a graduate course in Foul Language in the Army.
So this post, both as it pertains to swear words, social media, writing, and the evolution of language, is very interesting. I’m posting it here knowing that it will likely make our mothers reach for the smelling salts. Be that as it may, the social science behind it is really interesting. Also, the Strong Language blog is quite a read and worth checking out. More after the jump.
The Books are Taking Over... 