I haven't posted in almost 2 years. I knew starting a new blog was a leap of faith in my ability to keep it up and I knew I probably wouldn't follow through. Blogging about the situation with Kia was mostly for therapeutic reasons rather than informative purposes. If anyone is still following or curious about that, I can tell you she's still alive and well. She's never displayed any symptoms of lymphoma at any time, yet I continue to treat her with chemotherapy pills for 2 reasons: the phenotype test that came back positive for it is usually pretty accurate, and I don't want to gamble with my kitty's life. We've actually reduced her treatments to twice a week rather than three times. She's never completely gained back all the muscle mass she lost during her illness, but she continues to eat her mushy food and keep it down daily without showing the slightest signs of distress, which is all I can really ask for. Most people don't get to keep their cats for this long after being diagnosed with what she has. I could still have several more good years with her, or she could turn a corner and start declining at any minute. I simply don't know how much longer she has on this earth, but I'm thankful for the 13+ years I've had with her so far and consider each extra day a blessing.
Aside from Kia continuing to stay well, absolutely nothing in my life is the same as it was the last time I posted. For starters, one week after her diagnosis, I lost my job. They began laying people off in droves and I was in the very first group. It felt like I'd just been handed a death sentence. I'd barely been able to make ends meet and now was faced with the additional cost of Kia's care and suddenly was without any income whatsoever (except for unemployment pay, at a whopping $300 a week). Not only was I devastated by the financial implications, I was grief-stricken by the loss of the first job I'd ever had that I truly loved. My salary was barely enough to live on, but I never wanted to leave there because I loved what I did and I enjoyed going to work each day. After many, many years of loathing my own existence every time I set foot into my place of employment, I was so grateful to finally have a job that seemed tailor-made for me and my strengths. It didn't make any sense that I was laid off when there were so many other people there who didn't like their jobs and complained about it every day. So why me and not them? I couldn't understand why it happened and I grieved like I'd lost a member of my own family. I had literally lost something I loved and it was a tremendous void.
I didn't have a whole lot of time to process the shock of it all, though, because I had to concentrate on getting myself employed again. I found a side job singing in a church choir up in southeast DC. It didn't pay all the bills, but it was good side money, plus it was so nice to be able to sing again AND get paid for it! The only downside was waking up at 5:30 on Sunday mornings and driving 40 minutes into DC for a 7:30 call for an 8:00 am mass. There were 2 masses on Sunday: 8:00 and 11:00. So, I'd usually get home around 2:00 pm. Oftentimes, I'd only get a couple hours of sleep the night before (Saturday nights, y'know...) so I'd be pretty exhausted and would sleep through most of the Sunday afternoon football games. But I made it work. After 40 days of unemployment, I found a temp-to-hire job as an admin assistant at a data center for an internationally known Fortune 500 company. It was vastly different from my job at the law firm. I felt lost. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and that none of my skills were of any use to them there. The pay was pretty good, though. So between that and my part-time gig, I was finally making enough money to live comfortably. I no longer had to pinch every penny I could scrounge up. I could put gas in my car when needed. I could go out on weekends and actually buy drinks instead of having to rely on other people's charity. Also, things began to improve in other areas of my life that I had long awaited improvement in but had all but given up hope that they ever would. For the first time in 32 years, I was experiencing true, unadulterated happiness. I had an awesome living situation with my roommate Victoria and her dog, I was making enough money to survive AND put a little back for a rainy day, I was surrounded by people I loved and who loved me, my animals were both alive and well, and for the first time I could remember, I wasn't overly stressed out about anything. The sun had finally shone through the clouds and I was feeling reborn. For the first time, I knew what happiness was. Life couldn't possibly get much better. December 2011 and January 2012 were the best 2 months of my life.
Then things started to unravel. Victoria announced that she was moving out. My temp-to-perm job ended without becoming permanent, and a couple days after that, I lost my part-time job as well due to cuts to their music program. The good news was, I was only unemployed for a week. I found a new job at a law firm in Fairfax, an industry I had desperately missed since being laid off from my old job. It was nice feeling like I was "home" again at work. However, I still had the issue of my living situation to deal with. My lease was ending on March 1. I couldn't afford both halves of the rent so I had to either find someone to renew it with me, or I would be forced to vacate and find somewhere completely new to live. I tried to find a new roommate but, as usual, ended up frustrated and angry with people who would express interest then not show up to come look at it, or come see it then never get back in touch with me again. So, with time quickly running out, I made a fairly drastic and desperate decision: I moved to an entirely new apartment. I responded to an ad on craigslist looking for a roommate in Fairfax and moved in on St. Patrick's Day. The place was just down the street from my new job so I could go back to having a 2-mile commute (which is something else I desperately missed since losing my old job). It seemed like just the fresh start I needed. New job, new apartment, new city, no pressure on me to keep finding a new person to live with every 6-12 months. Problem solved, right?
Notsomuch. I was miserable. I felt homesick the very first night. I knew I'd made a big mistake. I missed Reston and everything about it. I missed all my old stomping grounds, I missed all the paved pedestrian paths where I could walk Kirby every day, I missed the town center, I missed my old grocery store loop, I missed getting off the beltway onto Rte 7 and taking that straight home. I missed my old apartment and my old community. I missed having a place that was more than just a room I was renting from someone. Not only did I not feel at home, but my living situation soon became absolute hell. I hated having to live on someone else's terms or suffer the consequences. My animals were miserable there, too. My roommate's dog was very aggressive towards them and my roommate didn't treat them very well, either. I began to fear for their safety, and then mine. It was such a slap in the face to be that miserable after having the best 2 months of my life. I knew I had to get out of there. I'd started looking at other places within a couple weeks of moving there, but then decided to stay and try to make it work. But, after yet another threat to my dog's safety, I could no longer suffer through any more. I sent Kirby to stay with my parents until I could get out of there, and gave my roommate my 30-day move out notice. I'd been looking in many different cities, but I knew my heart was in Reston. I was so happy to find a place back there. My commute was a bit longer, but it was a small price to pay for feeling like I was back where I belong. I moved out on Memorial Day weekend. My stint in Fairfax had lasted exactly 71 days.
Finally, I was back in Reston. But, my living situation unraveled pretty quickly there, too. My new roommate had been through a lot of trauma over the past couple of years and was extremely emotionally unstable as a result. She changed the terms on me the day I started bringing my stuff over by adding a third person to the mix who would be living in the basement. I'm not a fan of group homes. That wasn't what I thought I was signing up for and I wasn't comfortable sharing one bathroom with more than one person, especially if one of them was a middle-aged man. Then, in June, I went away for a weekend on the annual beach camping trip. My roommate had agreed to watch my pets for me while I was gone. Well, Kirby must have been very stressed by my being gone because she got sick that first night and had diarrhea on the floor. My roommate left me a hysterical voicemail that night telling me I had 60 days to move out. I hadn't even lived there a full month yet!! I had already done a ridiculous amount of moving since mid-March and it was only the end of June! Not just that, but my previous roommate had decided not to pay me my security deposit back, so I'd recently taken advantage of the free legal counsel I was receiving at work to file a Warrant In Debt against her. We had a court date coming up, which was stressing me out to the max already. Now I was faced with the additional stress of moving for the third time in less than 4 months.
Well, my current roommate had a change of heart 3 days later and told me I could stay after all. I kept looking, though, because I knew that situation was not going to work for me for very long. Then she suddenly demanded I raise my agreed upon rent by $250/mo. I refused, so she kicked me out again. Then she had a change of heart and we compromised on $100 extra. Then, in mid-October, I suffered the worst emotional devastation ever, which I simply could not face head on and resorted to going out constantly just to keep my mind busy and get away from everything at home. Shortly after that, my roommate announced her new boyfriend would be moving in with us, so there would soon be 4 people living in a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom townhouse. I was reaching my breaking point. I had lost a job I loved, a roommate I loved, an apartment I loved, and a man I loved all in one year. But things were about to get even worse.
On December 14, I came home from work and found a "Pay or Quit" notice posted to the door. Apparently, my roommate had failed to pay the rent that month and was now facing eviction if she didn't square up. I showed her the notice and she shrugged it off and said, "No, it's OK. I already paid." I could tell by the tears welling up in her eyes that she was lying, so I called the property management company. They couldn't tell me much since my name wasn't listed on the lease, but the person I spoke with quietly confirmed my suspicions and said they would be taking legal action against her. So now I was being forced to move again or get evicted along with the rest of the house. But, as it turned out, it didn't even matter. My roommate kicked me out a third time by telling me her cousin was moving here from Italy in February so she needed my bedroom back for her. I decided I was done and didn't want to wait until then. Victoria had offered me the spare bedroom in her townhouse, which was located in Reston near our old place. I took it, but with the caveat that her lease was ending in May, at which time she would be moving across the country to California. So I had until the end of April to find a permanent place to live, which would bring my grand total of moves in one single year to FOUR. And on top of everything else, my ex-ex-roommate (who'd failed to show up for our court date, resulting in me getting my judgment against her) had filed a motion to reopen our case for that following Friday, the 21st. So here's my timeline for the last 2 weeks of 2012: Dec. 14 - receive pay or quit notice. Dec. 15 - get kicked out for the third time and decide to crash with Victoria. Dec. 20 - start packing my stuff up. Dec. 21 - go to court again (which my ex-ex-roommate didn't show up for, either) and finish packing. Dec. 22 - move my stuff into Victoria's house. Dec. 23 - drive home to Ohio for Christmas. Dec. 26 - drive back from Ohio, right into a blizzard and crash my car into the median on the PA turnpike. Dec. 28 - go back to court for the garnishment of my ex-ex-roommate's wages (which she, of course, did not show up for either). Dec. 30 - Kirby gets attacked by another dog, gets badly injured and appears to have been killed right in front of my eyes.
OK, more on that: Kirby got bit on the neck by a large German Shepherd mix. Immediately, her body turned stiff and she fell to the side, her eyes glassed over and blood began pouring out of her mouth. I thought her neck had been snapped and she was dead. I called 911 but they refused to do anything other than send animal control over. So I sped her down to the closest 24-hour vet, praying she would come back to life. By the time I got there, she was conscious again but in shock and displaying neurological deficits. She couldn't stand or move her legs on her right side. She would just fall over. X-rays were negative as well as the exam for any external injuries. So, we didn't know where the blood was coming from. But, clearly something in her spinal cord was damaged. She spent the night in the ICU. During that night, I woke up every hour on the hour and cried out in heartbreak for my baby girl. I couldn't bear the thought of her not being there in bed with me, or not feeding her breakfast the next morning. My soul was completely and totally crushed. I spent a large portion of the day on New Year's Eve at the vet's just holding her in my arms while they continued to observe her progress. She finally got discharged at 9:00 pm that evening. There was a New Year's Eve party going on in our house, which I had dressed up for. But in the end, I stayed upstairs in my room with my animals and slept on the hardwood floor next to Kirby to make sure she felt safe. The vet had said the best thing I could do for her was to just spend as much down time with her as possible. So that's what I did. The vet bill was $1300. Fortunately, since the attack happened on the rental property and an injured pet is considered "property damage," it was covered by renter's insurance. But I still had to pay the deductible from my car insurance claim to fix the damage to my car. And, of course, every day was closer and closer to the end of Victoria's lease and, while I'd had luck finding potential roommates, I'd had very little luck in finding a place to live.
Here's the thing with that: I'd just been through hell with my living situation. I was not going to make this next decision lightly. I needed to find a place and a roommate that completely worked for me, and where I felt truly at home. I knew exactly what I was looking for. I was just having a lot of trouble finding it. Meanwhile, my roommate plans kept falling through. There were 4 people I met with between January and March who agreed to look for a place with me, but had to back out for one reason or another. Then I found out Victoria's parents were coming to stay with her for the last month of her lease to help prepare her for her move to Cali. So I actually needed to be out of the guest room at the beginning of April, not the end, as I'd previously thought. I'd just gone from thinking I had 6 weeks to move to having just 2. And I had yet to find a suitable living space! I really, REALLY didn't want to go back to just renting a room again, but I started exploring that option anyway and checking out other people's listings. Then my friend Pete (who had just signed some paperwork for an apartment in Reston) found out his plans had fallen through as well and he was back to looking again. I suggested we try to look for a place together and he agreed. The very next day, the perfect place appeared on craigslist: 2 bedroom, 2 bath, affordable, pet-friendly, across the street from the town center, and everything I had been holding out hope to find in my next place. The timing was just impeccable! We snatched that up right away and I began to pack and get ready to move again.
The Wednesday before the move, I came home from work to find Kirby straining to urinate. She'd developed a bladder infection in February, which we treated (or so I thought) but she continued to have problems holding it through the night. I thought she was just angry with me for all the moving or still traumatized by her attack. But now it became clear she was having serious problems. I rushed her to the emergency vet that night and spent 4 hours there, getting X-rays and exams and lab work. As it turned out, she had bladder stones and one had gotten lodged in her urethra and was preventing urine from passing through. They sedated her and pushed it back up into her bladder but it was a short-term solution. She needed surgery to remove them. They quoted me $2700 to have it done there. All of a sudden, I was back in those days when Kia was sick: feeling helpless and at a complete loss for what to do. I called the HSFC the next day to ask if there was any way I could get help from them again. They said that, while they could give me a loan, they couldn't just foot the bill entirely. I would have to pay it back eventually. The emergency vet had mentioned a clinic down in Richmond that could perform the surgery for $700. It would mean taking a day off of work to drive down there and put her through surgery, and there was the chance her bladder could re-obstruct and possibly burst before I could get down there. I called the clinic on Thursday anyway. They said they could fit her in the next day (Good Friday). I asked to take a last-minute vacation day from work (even though I was already taking Monday off to move), then I applied for a Care Credit card and, much to my surprise, was approved! I called Victoria to see if she wanted to take a day trip to Richmond with me tomorrow and she said yes. We left at 7:00 am and drove down to the clinic, dropped Kirby off at 9:00, then spent the day going to museums, beatnik coffee shops, and other touristy places. I was coming down with a nasty virus, however, and had to pop aspirin every couple of hours just to keep the body aches at bay. Kirby made it through surgery just fine, and we picked her up at 3:00 and drove back up to Reston (hitting all the Good Friday rush hour traffic on the way up). I had one day to rest, then I spent Easter Sunday lying on the bare floor of my new apartment and feeling close to death while the Verizon guy installed the cable.
The move did not go smoothly. The moving company got a flat tire on their way here and ended up arriving several hours late. It was long past my bedtime by the time I even put my bed back together, and I had to wake up at 6:00 and go to work the next day. I barely made it through the day due to exhaustion and residual sickness. I used a day of sick leave the next day and the office manager was all too happy to give it to me. Meanwhile, little things continued to go wrong with the new place, which required a lot of extra time and patience to resolve. Luckily, it eventually did and I am so happy to be living here!
My latest incident/drama/setback was last month when I was heading back from a weekend in Ocean City and accidentally ran over a concrete barrier at a gas station that had been hidden from my view, busting my oil pan. I had to tow my car to a service station in Delaware, but because it was Sunday, there was nobody who could do any work on it that day and no place I could get a rental to drive back. I had to catch a ride back to VA from my friends the next day, which resulted in another unexpected day off work and another $100 in pet sitting charges, since Pete was traveling that whole month. I didn't get my car back for 2 1/2 weeks due to so many delays in getting the insurance claim processed and the replacement parts ordered. Then, I had to take yet another vacation day to drive back to DE to pick it up and turn my rental car in (which was a bit of a GPS nightmare in and of itself). Thankfully, that's over and hopefully things will calm down for a while. In summary, I've had 2 moves, 2 car accidents, and 2 veterinary emergencies in the last 8 months alone.
These last 2 years have been one of the most tumultuous periods of my life. My emotions have run the gamut of being exuberantly happy to absolutely down in the dumps with no light at the end of the tunnel whatsoever. I've learned that nothing stays the same for very long. As someone who hates change, that's very tough to swallow. I'm no longer planning more than a month into the future because I simply do not know where I'm going to be at that point. I can't count on anything to be stable. Pete could decide he wants to move out, my landlords could decide to kick us out for some reason or another, one of my pets could fall ill suddenly, I could lose my job, I could damage my car, I could get my heart shattered, or I could experience any number of setbacks (emotional or financial). There are just no guarantees.
Someone asked me a few months back where I saw myself in 10 years. I couldn't answer. Ten years ago, I never would've seen myself where I am now. In fact, I didn't see myself where I am now 5 or even one year ago. As such, I am a duck on the water, floating through time and waiting to see where the current takes me. There is no plan for the future, except to wait and watch it unfold and to just keep on living in the meantime. I will live each day just as I have lived the last 700 days: one at a time.
