Mountain Girl Silver - Hand-Stamped Customized Silver Jewelry - Portland, Oregon

I’ve always thought of myself as a total opportunist…  Being a rebellious child under my parents wasn’t easy… always trying to find a way to either convince them, bribe them, treat them like crap until they caved, essentially doing whatever I found effective to get what I wanted. I distinctly remember my dad calling me a “con artist” when I was around 12 or 13. I didn’t know what the hell that meant. I thought, at the time, that it meant I was crafty and cool, and he admired me for something I guess…  Afterall, artists are cool right??  ha   Okay, so there has been soooooooooooooo much deliberation and arguing and fighting and total chaos in my life and in my house these last few weeks. Bought a house, faced with moving, other house has no workshop (yet), which obviously leaves me feeling a tad full of anxiety. Unfortunately I can’t just stamp and make jewelry off the tailgate of a truck or a kitchen counter for that matter. I need my space. My space has to be good. It has to have natural light, it has to be opened to the world outside, it has to have outlets and stuff so that I can blare my music so loud that the dudes next door mowing the grass can hear it thru their ear muffs.  Now typing this, I have the totally wrong idea about how I want my workshop. I’ve got an opportunity in front of me that, now in retrospect, is going to allow me to mold and create my workshop from scratch!!  I need to seriously start thinking about drafting up some pictures or something. Maybe a disco ball… I don’t know.. I don’t know how much time I’ll have.  Anyways, back to my original thought here.   So my husband has continuously told me over and over and over , NO, WE CANNOT GET ANOTHER CAT OR KITTEN IN THIS HOUSE!!  With no real good reason mind you….  it’d be different if he was severely allergic to the dander or whatever and a cat would put him in the hospital. But that’s so not the case.   I’m a cat person… yep.. I’m a crazy cat person that talks to her cats and like kisses their faces, and calls them nicknames and all that crazy cat lady crap…  The stigma of a crazy cat lady bothers me actually….  but as I grow older, I’m learning to accept the crazy things that I really am, and just roll with it.  You’ll never see me tho’, with more than sayyyyyy  8 cats. That might be too much. I currently have three…  Choppy (my fourth) recently ran away or something, or got eaten by something..I dunno.. I miss him and all, but he was sketchy from the get go. I guess I should’ve taken the hint when I went to go pick him out at a horse stable like place out in Estacada, Or and when I decided that he was the one (out of ohhhh, ummm about 200 cats running around) he took off and ran out into the horse stable dodge-ing horse hooves like he was dodge-ing traffic or something in Manhattan..   And at that moment, I thought ahhhh maybe I should pick another one… but not me.. when I have my heart set on something.. I totally stick to my guns.  Rest in Peace Choppy….  I still miss you and your goopy eyes and scabby head..  

So yesterday, I had an uncontrollable urge to check craigslist and the classifieds for kittens. I do it from time to time when I’ve finished the crossword puzzle and I’m sitting there at the table with my husband trying to look smart and interested in the daily news..(which I could give two craps about)…  But on Craigslist I found that the first ad was for a litter of Manx kittens. Daneen has a manx, and we had a manx as kids, but he (Gumby) got eaten by a coyote and that was the end of that.  My love for cats probably stems from the fact that my dad LOATHED dogs, and we never had a dog as kids…  beside the point. So I read this ad and like a lightbulb goes off.  I’ve recently found a new sense of self, and thought to myself, “self, why don’t you just do it!! Just do it… get a kitten… you want a kitten… you’ve wanted a kitten for a long time now, so just get yourself and the kids a kitten”..  which might not be the wisest decision or the most responsible decision at this time in my life with everything else that is going on…. but nonetheless, when it comes to cats, I’ve never really shown or exhibited in anyway a restraint.   So I emailed the gal on craigslist to see if she had any photos. And can I just say, that if you’re going to post a post on craigslist…  people only like to open the ones that say “pic” next to it. So if you really want to sell your stuff to people like me who buy stuff, then post a pic for cryin’ outloud!!   In her email she claimed that she didn’t know how to work her digital camera and that I’d have to wait until her husband got home so that he could upload them, which could’ve been wayyyyy into the evening.  I clearly couldn’t wait that long. So I emailed her back and said,, “Don’t you have a camera on your cell phone?”  and she writes back and says,, “I don’t own a cell phone”…  and I was like… okayyyyyyyyyy..  But God love her, she figured out how to take a picture and uploaded them flawlessly, and sent them off to me. Little does she know, her determination to conquer the camera fiasco helped with my determination…    I finally called her after she gave me her number, and when I made it perfectly clear (with my crazy cat lady voice) that I was serious, she emailed me her address and we agreed to meet at 10am this morning…

Kids and hubby are still asleep. We have to be up there in La Center, Washington at 10am. It’s roughly a 45 min drive from here.  Backing up a bit tho’, hubby heard my crazy cat lady voice when he turned the corner after coming upstairs from the basement and after I hung up he says to me, “What are you doing??”  Not in a mean way, but in a tone that hasn’t really settled with me lately. I looked at him, and said, “Give me ONE good reason why we can’t get a kitten?”  ”If you can give me a legitimate reason why I shouldn’t do this…..”…   He stared at the ground for a second or two, and then looked at me with pursed lips and a defeated demeanor and said,, “I can’t give you a good reason..”    SUCCESS!!!  

Maggie just hobbled downstairs, you can hear her coming down the stairs every morning long before her feet hit the floor because of her jingly, rattly-like, stuffed lovey she’s had since birth. Typically she turns the corner here on the couch and moans and groans and the demands start flying out of her mouth like saucers..  but she just came around here this very second and says with a smile, “We get to get a kitten todayyyyyyyyyyyy”    And now she’s currently on the floor with Trotter (our oldest cat) telling him that he’s  going to have good reason to piss everywhere now…   in her own sweet 4 year old words of course.   Soooo   as a family, we are going to forget about house A , house B, chores, stamping, attitudes for a few hours, and as a family, we’re headed up to Washington to pick out and bring home a manx kitten….    They are a different breed. Not like a foo foo breed. I printed out, from a Manx website last night, and highlighted this and handed it to my hubby when he was sitting here in the living room feeling totally defeated…..  and I quote..

“Manx are sometimes called a man’s cat. If you are a dog lover, the Manx is a good cat to purchase. They are more dog-like in their behavior than any other cat we know. You can teach them to fetch, they usually love rides in the car (truck drivers love them as companions), and they are drawn to water like a duck. They are easily leash trained and you can teach them to come by name or with a whistle. Loyal and people-oriented, most Manx are also easily reprimanded and learn the “no” command quickly”……   

I’m so excited……    With all the other things going on in our life.. all the friction, all the decisions, all the nasty remarks, I think I’ve got him convinced that a kitten is EXACTLY what this family needs right now. Secretly I know he knows I’m right….   for once ;c)

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.