Life

You're always working and you hate it.
I'm never working and I hate it.

You never want to play,
I always want to play.

You're always frustrated.
I'm always frustrated.
At least we have something in common.

When you come home, I want to play
but you are always focused on something else.
I thought making dailykos go away might make that something me.
but now it's your program.

maybe it's just that I stopped taking my medicine
but I am sad and a little afraid.
when do we get to be happy when we come home at night? will it change when we start working?
or is this what happiness is supposed to be?
it's not to me.
I miss you.

How is married life?

I get that question a lot. Honestly, I put into a circular file along with "Are you excited about the wedding?", "Your big day is coming up!", "It's whatever YOU want", "It's your day!" and "Congratulations!". Not that I blame anyone. Before I got married I asked the same questions in an attempt to show interest or make someone feel special. But once it starts happening to you, you start hearing the same questions over and over again until they just start to sound like "wah wah wah" Charlie Brown, you know. Now that I've been through it, I like to ask a prospective bride bizarre, entertaining, or personal questions - of course depending on our relationship - anything that's not about the wedding. Because if she's like me, the last thing on her mind is the wedding. Perhaps she's thinking about the injured foster kitten at home that's near death, or how much she has to study in order to pass her next biochem test, or what she should write about on her vet school application, or what she's going to do in the off chance she doesn't get into vet school (don't worry, she does). She's thinking about life, which revolves around her, and her significant other. Not the wedding. Don't get me wrong, it's important. But we've pretty much been married before we said I love you the first time. It's in the way we treat each other. Not the wedding colors, or the cake, or the type of bustle on the dress. It's us. And we are way cooler than a wedding. So be brave, ask me a harder or stranger or more entertaining question. I love a challenge.

Death and Destruction

I almost ran over a blind person today. I was driving down W. Anderson going about 40 mph and I saw a presumably blind person being led by her cute dog. I was thinking while slowing a bit, wouldn't it be terrible if that dog led her into traffic... and it started to right before I went past. I slammed on my brakes and honked my horn. The sound of the horn made the woman jump out of the way. Scared the shit out of me. I felt most sorry for the dog for almost being the cause of it's companion's death. Something wrong with me I guess.

And now some obligatory foster kitten pictures, to lighten the mood...

Poor Kraken

I have been riding my bike pretty much non stop. I am exhausted so there's warning that this post may be scatterbrained.

Our poor little sea monster has kitty herpes. So this means we have to keep little kittens away from her. Don't worry, humans are immune. But poor little Kraken can't have any more friends to beat up on. We'll just have to save big kitties from now on. (Shh, Henri hasn't quite come to terms with it yet. It's a soft spot).

I think a profession involving four legged beings is what fits me. Now I just have to convince the A&M interviewing committee of that on Tuesday. Please send positive brain energy my way.

The other day was the first in eight years where they didn't euthanize ANY CATS at Town Lake Animal Center. Being a part of the solution forgives all transgressions. And I love that my inbox is cluttered with people wanting to make the world a better place for animals. Thank you EmanciPet, AustinPetsAlive!, and all the other Austin organizations that are striving to end the insanity.

Flux of reality...

For me, coming into adulthood has two stages. The first part was regret - realization that things are not like they used to be, and ignorant longing to make them that way again. The lack of responsibility and ability to do bad things without the consequences - I wanted that back. I was somewhat sad. But I think I am mostly over that part. Now I am finding myself in the second stage: feeling comfortable in my own skin. I am not so much afraid anymore for backlashes of being truly Kristen, because I think the world needs more people like me, regardless of whether or not they want it. I had realized that life was always going to be hard in stage 1, but now I'm okay with it. Life would be pretty bland if it were never challenging. Like the holiday break - I pray all semester for it, then when it gets here, I find myself dreaming in a few days about the classes I am taking next semester. I see that love doesn't make marriage come easily, and I will have to work at it. But I am happy because I think I have the best person in the world to work at it with. Strangely, I look forward to all the hard, depressing, mundane things we will have to go through together. Because it will only make the short breaks of awesome better. And I am realizing that I always, always, always have to pursue the true, changing Kristen. Because you can't be awesome by just doing, it's the being that matters more.

I took Travis back to the shelter yesterday. I'm gonna miss the lil bugger...

It's finals time...

which means that it's time for Kristen to torture herself for weeks, causing her to realize all of the bad habits and methods of procrastination she has ingrained into her daily life are destroying her ability to efficiently assimilate knowledge.

Kristen notices how she is talking in 3rd person and thinks about how often she updates her facebook status, and how hard it is to avoid starting to Twitter. What happened to our private lives? Why am I not bothered by this loss of privacy? I demonize Prez Bush for taking away my privacy, then turn around and display every move I make on the internet. And I love to do it.

Another mistake I made this week was saying I could work one day at EmanciPet, the day before my most important final. I don't think it's all that bad though, because if I just had myself to myself for a week straight studying the likelihood of insanity would be of immense proportions. It was an interesting day to say the least. This woman threatened to euthanize her dog at the end of the day because we didn't spay her, because her gums were practically white, she had a wheezing cough, and was creepily lethargic for an 8 month old puppy. So one of our vet techs convinced Psycho Cold-hearted Satan Woman to relinquish the dog to us. My co-workers never cease to impress me. We of course have our differences, but everyone I work with has an automatic disposition to saving the life of an animal. Without any thought or discourse. And they follow through. It's a beautiful thing, and sometimes makes me teary-eyed. Which is a pretty big deal when you're on Prozac.

Turkey Day

Animal Control: the animals are in control of us all.