Reberb 9. Reading as a child.

Dear Kittens,

Today’s Reverb Broads subject is: 12/9/2011 What was your favorite children’s book? Niki

I don’t know the answer to this question! I read a lot as a kid and my mom encouraged my reading by buying books that were way too advanced for me, but I read them anyway. For example, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 1o. Yep. I didn’t really get it, but I remember that I enjoyed it.

I’m not sure how old I was when I started reading Judy Blume books, but I loved them with my whole heart and I read them over and over and over. Maybe those were my favorites?

Gah! I don’t know!

Love

Catie

Reverb 8. Why indeed.

Dear Kittens,

Today’s assignment for Reverb Broads is: Why blog? Why do you or why do you like to blog (recognizing that these are not always the same thing)? Kristen

Okay, so now I will tell you a story. YOU ARE WELCOME.

I started my first blog December 31, 1999. In case you do not know your numbers, that’s a long time. My first blog was at Diaryland and even though I grew to hate Diaryland’s founder, it was a wonderful place for me for many years. I met many wonderful people through Diaryland. I am getting a little verklempt thinking about how many amazing people were brought into my life because of Diaryland.

I started blogging because I had this penpal friendship that was really meaningful to me. That relationship ended and although I missed my friend, I found that I missed the writing even more. At first I tried just journaling on my computer and that did not fill that hole. I quickly realized that I didn’t just want to write, I also wanted to be read. Diaryland was PERFECT for me. It was a super small community of people and blogging was brand spanking new.

I’ve always had a public blog, I’ve never hidded it from anyone in my real life and I’ve always done my best to use my real “voice” and be as honest as I could stand to be. I’ve had to explain why I blogged a lot and even all these years later, I still cannot come up with a good enough reason that makes non-Internet people understand. Screw those non-Internet people, though because they don’t get it and they never will. This is what I’ll tell you, sharing my story all these years has been a deeply rewarding experience and even though I’ve been in something of a writing slump for the past couple years, it’s still something that I value quite a lot. I will also tell you that if you read my blog, you know me. You don’t know every single detail of course, but when you meet me, you will not be surprised by what you get because this is me.

And now I will tell you my top 5 PRO TIPS in blogging:

1. Do not tell me what you wrote is boring. If you start out a blog post telling me that it’s boring, I believe you and I will not continue to read it. If you leave out that disclaimer, I might still think it’s boring, or maybe I will enjoy it!

2. Write with your authentic voice. Kittens, read what you write aloud. Does it sound like you? Yes? Good job.

3. Include stories of your pet’s imaginary lives. Everyone loves that. Okay, maybe that’s just me, but man, I really love to read about cats with lives that their owners know nothing about.

4. Only write positive things about your partner, unless you want everyone to hate them.

5. WRITE ABOUT YOUR LUNCH. I love Maggie Mason, but the real truth is some of us ARE interested in what you had for lunch.

Love,
Catie

Reverb 7. LOLZ

Dear Kittens,

Today’s Reverb topic: Who or what makes you laugh so hard that milk shoots out of your nose and why? Slapstick, dry witty comedy, your kids, Monty Python? From Kassie.

I’m having a super hard time with this one, but I’m not entirely sure why. I’ma let it go for now. I might come back and write a real post at a later date.

Love,

Catie

Reverb 6. Never, ever

Dear Kittens,

I haven’t done an awesome job of linking when it comes to these posts. Meep! I’m sorry, Reverb Broads.

Today’s prompt is brought to us by Katrina Tripled, she asks us to list 10 Things I Would Never Do. Yay! I legimate reason to make a list.

1. Go to India. I’ve heard enough stories from very experienced travelers about how hard India is to know that I do not have what it takes to do it.

2. Live anywhere than in California. I was born here, I’ve lived here my entire life and I love this state with my whole heart. I never want to live anywhere else. I like to visit plenty of places, but California is my home.

3. Not have a dog. Now that I’ve had Murray, I know that I will always want to have a dog in my life.

4. Wear super high (3+ inches) heels regularly. I don’t like flats, but neither do I enjoy wearing high heels. I always feel like an idiot when I’m hobbling around on high heels.

5. Get a tattoo. I have given getting a tattoo a lot of thought and thankfully, I realized at the right time, that I was not the right person to get a tattoo. I am very lucky to know people with tattoos that I truly love how they look. It makes up for the fact that 99% of the tattoos I’m forced to look at are total shit.

6. Like broccoli. I hate it’s stupid green cruciferous guts. Always have. Aways will.

7. Enjoy travel. I like being in a new place, but getting there sucks so much ass.

8. Have very long hair. Listen, this is easy. It looks awful on me.

9. Be on the local TV news willingly.

10. Stop loving you.

Love,

Catie

Reverb 5. I did it!

Dear Kittens,

Yay! I’m caught up! Today’s Reverb prompt is: What is the one thing you finally did this year that you always wanted or said you were going to do, but in your heart of hearts never thought you would actually do?

I made serious progress on getting my house (and life) organized! This deserves an exclaimation mark because I’ve been dealing with chronic issues of disorganization, procrastination and general messiness my entire life.

I’ve always believed that my things have energy and I’ve known for some time that I had too much stuff and that stuff was bringing me down. I started by going through my clothes. And then I did that again. And then I did it some more. In the end, I came to the realization that in order to truly pare down, I had to get rid of stuff that fit and flattered me, but was repeats of things I already had. I will admit to you that it was difficult to do that and I am still holding on to too many cardigans. My new rule for clothes and shoes and accessories is one thing in, one thing out. If I get something new, something old goes. I have a certain amount of storage and in order to keep myself neat and organized, everything has to fit easily!

Once I got my clothes (mostly) under control, I decided that I should get rid of every item in the house that I didn’t love. I have a large built-in cabinet in the living room that is mostly used as a bookcase, but has a fair number of display items in it, too. I went through every single thing and asked myself the simple question, “do I love this?” If I loved it, but did’t know what to do with it, I kept it. If I didn’t love it, it went right to donation. I don’t know how many boxes of stuff I ended up giving away, but it was a lot. I have a lot of stuff! I’m not completely finished with this project, but I’m making serious progress.

I’ve written a fair amount already about how transformative this project has been for me. Getting rid of a lot of things, creating systems in the house so things work like they’re supposed to, it’s changing me. I think I will always procrastinate and always be messy, but I’m making it much easier to get things done in a timely manner and keep things neat and organized and that feels really huge. Not to mention that this has been a really good exercise in focus. There’s been this temptation to beat myself up for letting my posessions get out of hand, but I haven’t allowed myself to dwell there. That’s not productive. Instead I am keeping my focus on right here and right now. Also, by moving slowly, I’m allowing myself to really enjoy each space as it’s newly organized and that’s serving as a wonderful reward for my work.

This has been an awesome experience.

Love,
Catie

Reverb 4. Movie

 Dear Kittens,

I totally owe you an apology for not really writing anything for a really long time and now crushing your brains with all this writing now! I AM SORRY.

Today’s prompt: In the movie version of your life, which actor/actress would play you and the significant players in your life? What kind of movie is it (e.g., made-for-TV, action, emo/indie, etc.)? What would be the major plot points, and how will it end?

I am reaaaallllllyyyy bad at this game. So instead of playing along exactly, I will tell you this- I often imagine myself to be in a movie. Especially if I’m driving and the perfect driving song is playing. I imagine myself to be in one of those filler scenes where a person is, you know, driving. This also happens when I’m making the bed, cooking or putting on makeup.

I don’t know why my imaginary film crew only likes to record the more mundand aspects of my life, but they do! My movie is going to be the most boring movie ever in the world! Except, it will have great music which means it will be very Tom Petty heavy.

Love,
Catie

Reverb 3. Grown up

Dear Kittens,

The third Reverb prompt is:  How did you become more of a grown-up this year? Or did you pull a Peter Pan and stubbornly remain childlike?

There are three things that my mom taught me that I am forever grateful for.

The first was that life is not fair. I notice that when people complain about things not being fair, almost always that’s not-so-secret code for “I am not getting my way.”

The second was to be careful who have you sex with. The lesson there is, if you get pregnant and have someone’s baby- that person is in your life forever.

The third and most relevant for this prompt is that being an adult is AWESOME.

I love adulthood. I love the responsibility that comes along with it. I love paying bills. I love it when things are difficult and it means sacrifice and I love it when I must make hard choices. I love it all because it means I am the boss of my life. Being an adult doesn’t feel exactly like I thought it would when I was a kid, but it’s even more awesome than I thought it would be.

This year has been a really challenging one for me because Andy switched from a pretty laid back job to a very demanding job. This meant that we were not able to spend as much time together and all the little bad habits that we’d indulged in with our marriage now became super big issues! Things like not communicating carefully and clearly with each other. Not setting aside time to do things. Not keeping things hot between us. Stuff that when you’re spending plenty of time together it’s easier to ignore because at least you’ve got contact. When we were spending less time together, it became obvious that our marriage needed some significant renovations.

How I became more of a grown up this year is that I took charge of making sure we worked on our issues. My attitude was if this thing falls apart, it’s not going to be because we didn’t make the effort to fix it. There were times when it was enormously painful to look at each or our contributions to the problems (so much easier to blame the other guy!) and there were times when it just felt like Too Much. I can tell you that I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it and I got to a point where I realized that success did not mean staying together. Success meant being in a relationship that worked for both of us. Once that became clear to me, it got so much easier to make the small, but extremely meaningful changes in attitude and actions that helped turned my marriage around.

I take credit for this not because I did all the work, but because Andy is not the sort of person to ever purposely rock the boat. If I didn’t insist on something better for both of us, even if that meant not being together anymore, we would be resentful, angry and deeply unhappy. Doing this work reminded me that while our marriage is the two of us, it’s also somehow separate from each of us. It requires a fair amount of attention and care and nurturing because it’s not just Andy and me. It’s our families and the house and pets and friends and dishes and books and CDs and cars and expectations and disappointments. It’s everything we are separately and everything we are together.

This is all about grown up love. This isn’t about the sort of love you feel. This is about the love that informs your behavior. We’ve been together for 21 years. We became adults together. We are in love, but more than that, we really like each other and every single day we make each other laugh. And taking charge of getting our marriage from a place of laziness to a place of active loving is how I became more of a grown up this year.

Love,
Catie

Reverb 2. Stupid

Dear Kittens,

This Reverb prompt is: What is the stupidest thing you did this year? What about in your whole life? You can take stupid to mean: embarrassing, dangerous, funny, lame, whatever you consider “stupid.

This is super hard for me because I’m one of those people that thinks even the bad things that happen to her are good because I learned me a lesson. Oh, okay. I’ve got one. Not about this year, but three years ago.

Three years ago in November my old cat, Roo, died while I was on a trip to Europe with Andy and my parents. He died exactly 18 years to the day that he came home to live with us. He was old and sick and exceptionally grouchy and while we were sad about this death, we were not surprised and there was more than just a small amount of relief that we didn’t need to care for an ailing, grouchy cat anymore. 11 days after Roo died, the kitty love of my life, Petey Pete Peter von Fluffenberg was killed by a car. This sounds dramatic, but I assure that it’s true, when I realized that Petey was dead (a neighbor found him in the street and kindly put him in a box on our porch with a note) my heart felt like someone had punched it. I sank to my knees and howled from the pain of that loss. I have lost people that I loved and it didn’t hurt as badly as losing that cat. I was a mess for weeks after his death.

And then I thinked up something super great. LET’S GET A PUPPY. Oh yes, while I was still waist deep in grief, I thought, “the best thing for me right now is to get an impossibly cute, stubborn, smart, sharp toothed ball of pee and poop.” THAT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

There is not enough HA’s in the world to express how incredibly stupid that decision was. I researched breeds. I thought about what I wanted in a dog. I thought about the sort of dog owner I wanted to be. I bought dog training books. I sought out advice from friends and the Internet. I watched TV shows about dogs. I started talking to dog owners in our neighborhood. I was prepared. Instead 5 million haha’s right here. Through the advice of an aquaintence, I chose a breeder and ordered me a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. I wish I could remember the name the breeder gave him, it might have been Oscar. Anyway, I saw photos of him and I was smitten. Then he arrived. And I took one look at that leggy puppy and I thought, “oh my God. What the hell have I done?”

Getting a dog was not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but getting a dog a mere 3 months after I experienced such a huge loss, was. I did not have the emotional reserves to deal with such a challenging dog. This puppy marched into the house and looked around and said to himself, “yes, this will do. I will ruin these peoples lives and it will be AWESOME.” You guys, I truly believed that because I had once owned 3 cats at the same time that I was prepared for a puppy. A puppy! Maybe you don’t know this, but dogs are a tremendous amount of work. I tried very hard to do things on my own, but at some point I started to second guess myself and Murray saw that oportunity and asserted himself. I cried every single day for a month because dealing with a puppy was too much for me. I was lucky to have an extremely patient and supportive friend at the time who encouraged me, but man, that was hard. Finally, I called a dog trainer and the second he walked through our front door, things got better and I felt way smarter.

Love, Catie

Reverb 1. Letter to my younger self.

Dear Kittens,

I’m participating in Reverb this year and I’m behind because I spent last weekend in Las Vegas. I’m going to try my best to catch up lickity split!

I will admit to cheating a bit here. I’ve done this exercise before somewhere else. I thought about writing a fresh letter, but I REALLY like this one and want to share it.

Dear 10 Year Old Catie,
You are in this moment, everything you will ever need to be. You have a strong moral compass, you are driven, you are strong and smart and you know exactly who you are in this world and what you want for yourself. I know you’re in a hurry to be a grown up and I totally get that, but I hope you keep these things in mind as you get older.
1. You always know the right thing to do. When you think you feel confused, that’s just because what your heart wants to be true and what is really true do not agree. Go with what’s really true. You will never once be sorry for taking that route. It might hurt in the moment, but when you get even 10 seconds away from the situation, you’ll be so glad.
2. Right now your relationship with your dad is okay. In about 3 years, it’s going to get really, really hard. It will be tricky because there will be some great things about this relationship, don’t spend too much time thinking that the great things are worth the really shit things. It’s okay to distance yourself from him. It’s okay to see him less. It’s okay to end that relationship as soon as you possibly can (don’t wait until you’re 32). Here is where the rubber meets the road for you. When you end your relationship with your dad, you will realize that you are an exceptionally strong person and you will never regret doing this. You’ll be sorry that it needed to be done, but you will never be sorry that you did it.
3. This is a three parter.
a) People always tell you who they are. Pay attention. Who someone really is, is not always going to match up with who you want them to be. You will save yourself so much trouble if you just pay attention. 

b) Being an adult is even more awesome than you think it’s going to be. Don’t listen to people who complain about responsibility. Taking responsibility sets you free. You get to design your life and do whatever you want to and it’s 100% because you accept responsibility as a gift and not a burden.

c) Ask for help sooner. People want to help, let them. You figure out a lot of stuff on your own and that’s awesome, but asking for help is awesome too. Give people the opportunity to be there for you.
Love,

43 Year Old Catie