Today there was a shooting at Marysville Pilchuck High School. It is a high school in the town that I lived in up until last year. A few of my friends have teenagers that attend class there. As far as I know, they are all safe.
There’s no confirmed number of victims hurt or dead. The school is locked down, rooms are being cleared one by one, and students and staff are slowly, methodically being evacuated to a nearby church.
Yet another school shooting, and in my own community. It makes my head spin. I can’t imagine being the shooter, a kid so angry that he felt compelled to kill others, and according to reports, himself. I can’t imagine being in a high school cafeteria, eating lunch, then fearing for my own life as a fellow student opens fire. At thirty, I don’t think I could handle something like that. Forget about being able to handle it as a teenager.
There’s something wrong in our society, that this keeps happening.
I listen to the live feed from news stations, and from the local police scanner, to hear what is going on. I check Twitter and news articles. Already the ignorant are losing their minds in the comments. Arm teachers! and This is not a gun control issue, no one is taking my guns away! Because of course violence stops violence. I can’t read the comments. They make me sick to my stomach. How anyone can value gun possession over human life will never cease to amaze me. The campus hasn’t even been thoroughly searched yet and already these crazies must make their love of their guns known.
Yes. More guns. That’ll solve everything.
Ridiculous.
I don’t know what to think of all this, and I feel like I’m moving through a fog as I try to process it. This is how I feel, every time this happens. I can’t get my mind around children that are angry and depressed enough to kill.
We need to do something in this country. That something is definitely not arming schoolteachers. The something is not adding more guns into the mix.
People insist I will change my mind, when I say I will not have children. Days like today are the reason why I will not change my mind. I don’t want to raise a child in a society where kids have to do drills so that they know what to do in the event of a shooting. I don’t want to raise a child in a society that looks into the face of a tragedy like this and cries out for more guns and more violence. I do not live in an environment that I wish to inflict on someone of my own creation. No, I will not do that.
My heart goes out to all of those impacted by the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting. I know there’s nothing that I can say, write, or do that will take the pain out of today’s tragic events. I hope for a complete recovery for anyone injured, and for any that have passed away, I hope that their families and friends can somehow find comfort.
 

With just a couple more weeks until I move, I have a LOT to do! Yesterday Amy and I went to Home Depot and bought paint for my bedroom, our living room, and my bathroom. We then spent the afternoon working in the house, and even though we still have a lot more to do, we made some good progress. I picked a deep purple paint color for two of my bedroom walls, and a light gray for the other two. I love my colors. My room will also have brand new carpet before I move in, so everything will be clean and new.
I’m getting really excited to move into our new house. Hopefully we can have all of our painting done by this weekend, and I really need to get serious about packing some things (I haven’t packed a single box yet…bad me). I’m lucky to have Amy, who has gotten a ton of work done at the house while I’ve been at work. We get along so well, I can already tell she’s going to be amazing as a roommate.
I’m not anticipating that it’s going to take me long to pack my things. I didn’t bring that much with me when I moved into my apartment last year, and I’m going to be even more selective about what goes with me to Kirkland. Non-essentials are going to be thrown away or donated. I’m even going to be extra-picky about what clothes I take, because I don’t want my closet to be so stuffed full of clothes that I can’t find anything!
My boyfriend got me these really neat plastic storage bins to keep my shoes in. They’re designed to fit under my bed, and they have little wheels on the bottoms so that I can easily pull them out from under my bed, pick my shoes for the day, and slide them back. He even braved Walmart to get them for me. I loves him!
Amy and I are really lucky to have the house we’re renting. It’s all one story, good size for two people without being overwhelming. It’s in a fantastic neighborhood and it’s close to the freeway for me (I’ll be gaining a commute from Kirkland to Everett, but at least I’ll be going against traffic both ways).
We still have so much to do, but I cannot wait to move in!
 

I’m really trying to get back into blogging, although I feel like I really don’t have a lot going on right now that would be exciting for anyone else to read about.

Today is my Saturday kitty’s sixth birthday. I can’t believe my little teeny tiny kitten is six years old today. I know, I know, it sounds like such a “cat lady” thing to talk about, my cat’s birthday. In my defense, I know his birthday because he was brought into the shelter I used to volunteer at shortly after birth, and his birthday is printed on his vaccine records. I don’t know Angel or Oliver’s birthday, so I just keep track of their ages by their adoption dates. Oliver, I think, was born sometime in March of 2006. Angel was about two years old when I got her, so I really have no idea exactly when she was born or how old she really is. We can only guess.

I bought Saturday a new cardboard scratcher (they’re  his favorite and he routinely gets new ones because he’s hard on them and tears them up) and some toy mousies with feather tails. I gave him the scratcher last night when I got home, and he got really excited over it. He rubbed around on it, broke it in with some good hard scratching, and then came and got in my lap and rubbed his face back and forth across my arm while he purred, as if to say thank-you. This morning I gave him the mousies, and he was in cat heaven. He played with them while I got ready for work. No doubt they’ll soon be stuck under the couch or somewhere, but I gave him three so hopefully he’ll always have at least one that he can find.

I watched him playing, purring away, and was happy to see my little guy so thrilled. I tried not to feel sad when I thought about his sister Friday, who is no longer with me and will not get any new toys or snuggles from me on her birthday. I left both Friday and a fifth cat, Darwin, with Ex Boyfriend when I moved out last December. I didn’t do it because I don’t love them as much as the other three. I love them both to pieces and I miss them every day. Despite having always vowed that if I were ever to find myself apart from Ex, all five cats would go with me, I left Friday and Darwin because having five cats in a small apartment would not have been a good situation for them. I had initially offered to let Ex keep Darwin only, because Darwin just adores him and loves him far more than he ever loved me. But Ex wanted Friday too, and even though it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, I agreed to let him keep her. I didn’t want Darwin to be alone, and I knew in my heart that even four cats for one person was a lot.

I never thought it would work out the way it did. I never thought that Ex would end up hating me and I would most likely never get to see Friday and Darwin again. The last time I saw them was last January, when he and I were still on civil terms and I watched his house and both cats while he was on vacation. But by February I had started seeing someone new, and Ex deals with that by despising me. I don’t know if he’s been on any trips out of town since (I would imagine he has), but if he’s needed someone to watch Friday and Darwin he’s chosen someone other than me. I know that he loves them and takes good care of them. I hope that they know that I love them, too. That I did the best I could for them.

I may not have Friday and Darwin anymore, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that they are well loved and cared for. And I do have Angel, Oliver, and Saturday to love and spoil rotten. I love them so much and am so glad that I get to be the one to take care of them and love them.

I saw my new house last week, and I really like it! It’s an adorable one-story house on a quiet street of well-maintained homes. Amy and I are going to have a busy few weeks packing and preparing to move, and I’m sure time is going to fly by.
My boyfriend very sweetly took me on a neighborhood tour of where I’ll be living yesterday (he knows the Kirkland area way better than I do). I have to say, it’s quite an upgrade from where I live now in Everett. Not that my current neighborhood is bad or anything, but the new area is so pretty!
This morning I emailed my apartment manager and let her know that I was leaving. That was a little sad for me, because she’s been beyond wonderful to me. A year ago when I first met her, I was frantically looking for ANY available place to live. Not only did she work with me every step of the way to make things as easy and affordable as possible, but she went above and beyond to make me comfortable and happy in my new home. I’ve never moved into a rental that was so clean before (and I saw my place before any work was done to it…it was a WRECK).I left a nice review on apartmentratings.com about the place I’ve been living, and thanked my apartment manager for being so fantastic.
I’m getting excited to do all the new-home things: picking out paint colors for my bedroom and new towels to go with the pretty blue bathroom, deciding how to decorate, baking the first batch of cookies in the new kitchen. Amy shares my love of baking so the two of us are going to have to find people to give all our yummy homemade treats to! What I’m NOT so excited about is packing (ugh!) but luckily in my last move I pretty much just took the essentials, so I should be able to knock out the packing in a couple of days.
I’m so excited about our new house, and I can’t wait to be there.
 
 
 

Tonight, I’m going to go look at a house. I won’t be doing this alone, though: my friend Amy and I have decided to move in together. It’ll be a new experience for me, since I’ve never lived with a roommate before. Although I’m loathe to move yet again (this will be my fourth home since moving to Washington in 2010), I’m excited to share a house with my friend and to be in a better financial situation. Living alone is expensive, and although it is peaceful, it can definitely get lonely at times. It will be nice to have someone to come home to, to make dinner and bake cookies with, and to drink coffee with in the mornings.
Even though I’ve decided to move out of the apartment I’m in now, I really have come to love that place. When I moved in last December, I fully expected to hate it. I had never chosen a place to live all by myself before, and the one I got was not picked out because I fell in love with it but because it was available and I needed to move quickly. I would have  been far happier to be able to stay in the house I’d lived in back in Marysville, but I just couldn’t afford it on my own. I loved that house and was sad to leave it behind.
To my surprise, I grew to love my little apartment and I will actually be a little sad when I leave it. But I am ready for this new adventure (except for the packing part…I hate packing). I’m eager to be moved, unpacked, and comfortable in the new place, and excited to have my very first roommate!
 
 
 

As if the cooler temperatures weren’t enough of an indication that it’s fall, the dark mornings are. All summer long, the sun was out by the time my alarm went off in the mornings. Over the last few weeks, it’s gone from daylight to sunrise, and this week it’s still completely dark out even now. It makes it a lot harder to get moving in the mornings!
Last night I was able to get a little glimpse of sunset through the clouds as I drove home from my Zumba class in Smokey Point, but soon enough it’ll be dark when I go home in the evenings, too. With October will come Daylight Savings Time, which will give me back my brighter mornings for a few weeks but will make for even earlier sunsets. When I first moved to Washington, one of the things that really amazed me was how much different the daylight is in the summer than it is in the winter. In California, winter days are shorter, but not so drastically so. Here, the daylight stretches well into the evening in summer, but the sun sets before five o’clock in the evening in wintertime.
The other night my boyfriend and I went out for dinner in Edmonds. When we walked out of the restaurant after we’d eaten, we could both smell the “fall” smell of smoke from chimneys. People are starting to have fires again. I have a wood-burning fireplace in my apartment, so I could definitely go this route myself. It’s chilly in my place when I get home from work and chilly when I wake up in the mornings. I refuse to turn on the heat this early in the fall, though. Electric heat is SO expensive. So last night I put an extra blanket on my bed and snuggled up with my kitties. This morning I pulled a robe on over my pajamas and made myself a nice hot cup of coffee. I sat at my dining room table to drink it, the kitchen light on because it was still dark outside, thinking about how just a few weeks ago I was enjoying sitting in that same spot with cool late-summer morning air breezing in through the open window. This morning there’s no way I want the windows open.
I’m getting a four-day reprieve from fall weather when I leave on Thursday for a long weekend visiting my family in California. My dad told me yesterday that their temperatures should be in the nineties. Tonight when I pack for my trip, my bag will be full of t-shirts, tank tops, and capris. Then when I get home next week, I’ll pack those things away for the winter and bring out my cool-weather stuff: sweaters and long pants and light coats.
My favorite part of the cooler weather is that Saturday likes to sleep under the covers, snuggled into my side. His sweet little kitty snores make me smile. Angel likes to sleep on my pillow, and Oliver usually settles himself near my feet, but Saturday wants to be as close to in my skin as he possibly can.
I’m looking forward to October. Summer is by far my favorite season, but I really do like fall in the Northwest. A lot of the trees are evergreen so there’s not a lot of change in the color, but there are also a lot of trees that will turn brilliant oranges and reds in October. I like to wait until about halfway through the month and then take a day trip over to Leavenworth, mostly because the drive over the pass to get there is so pretty with all the changing leaves.
I feel like this year has flown by, and I’m going to blink and it’s going to be over. Wasn’t it just January, when I was newly living alone and feeling like life would never be normal again? And now life is quiet, calm, and routine, and I am happy.
 
 

This week was my 11-year anniversary at work, and for some reason a couple of nights ago I had a nightmare that I was let go from my job. Dream me was a sobbing mess as I packed up my things and panicked about how I was going to pay bills with no income. Cat food isn’t cheap, people. Needless to say, I was pretty happy to wake up that morning and discover that it had all been just a dream, and I can’t remember the last time I was so happy to get up and get ready for work.
A scary dream about losing my employment definitely made me more grateful for my steady job, and my ability to rely on paychecks being deposited into my bank account every two weeks. For me, this whole week has been full of gratitude-inspiring moments. I’m trying to re-establish my workout schedule after falling way off track over the last several months. When I woke up this morning, my arms and shoulders were SORE after a particularly intense kettle ball workout at my gym yesterday. It may sound crazy, but I was incredibly happy to hurt. I can feel myself getting back in shape, back to a place where I feel like I can push myself and my body will do whatever I want it to do. I know that I’m lucky to be able to go into the gym and work hard and feel good. Not everyone can. I have friends that are struggling with injury recovery right now and I see their frustrations. That could just as easily be me, and I’m thankful for my health.
It’s been a really crazy week at work for my boyfriend, and yet amid insanely long hours he still manages to make time to have dinner with me, and talk to me on the phone on days I don’t get to see him. No matter what’s going on in his life, he makes me a priority. I’m so grateful for him, and so overwhelmed in the best possible way by how much he loves me and cares about me.
And then there was this moment:

I was watching TV the other night, and Saturday came and snuggled up to me, purring himself to sleep. I love my kitties so much. They make me so, so happy. I don’t think it’s possible to be unhappy with a sweet, purring kitty snuggled up to you. I love our cuddly moments.
Next week I get to spend a long weekend with my family, and I’m extremely excited for the visit. My family is important to me, and living so far away I don’t get to see them nearly as often as I’d like to.
And, lastly, I am happy that it is Friday and that this dreary rain we’ve had this week is supposed to clear out right in time for the weekend!
 
 

I wasn’t going to write about Ray Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back who was caught on video knocking his then-fiancee, now wife, out cold in an elevator. Yes, what he did made me angry and sickened me. I seriously doubt that the day that video was shot was the first time he’d raised his hands to a woman, or the last. All that makes me sad, but those comments have been made before, so I didn’t see the need to take to the Internet to reiterate them.
It makes me madder still that Rice wasn’t cut from the Ravens until this week, when additional footage was released showing what happened in that elevator. To me, the fact that he was abusing a woman in that elevator was enough, regardless of footage. It disgusts me that, so often even in our present day, acts of domestic violence are downplayed or downright ignored until there is too much evidence staring society in the face to be able to turn away from it. In this case, it was video footage. Often, it’s a victim being either severely injured or killed that spurs the wake-up call. And even now, amid the horror-stricken people crying out for Rice to not just be suspended from the NFL, but jailed for his actions, comes the question, “Why does his wife stay with him?” I hate this question. I suppose it’s one that you can’t really understand the answer to unless you’ve been the victim of violence at the hands of someone you love, and who claims to love you. But really, this question is just a form of victim-shaming. In my mind, asking a battered woman why she stays with her abuser is no different than asking a rape victim why she wore such a short skirt.
Even with all of that, I still hadn’t planned on writing about this. It’s very triggering for me and I would rather just acknowledge that it was a terrible thing that Ray Rice did, and move on. But then today on Twitter, I found the hashtags #whyIstayed and #whyIleft trending. And it just broke me. I sat and read tweet after tweet, survivors and victims putting themselves out there and answering the question of why they chose to stay, and why they finally left. They were addressing, in one united strong voice, the answer to the question that has been asked so much about Janay Palmer Rice. I added my own tweets, to let my voice be heard.
And so, I am writing about Ray Rice. I am writing about domestic violence, because people want to understand the answer to the question, “Why does she stay?” She stays because she loves him. Because she doesn’t want to disrupt her family. Because being a victim of domestic violence can still make that victim feel ashamed, even though she has done nothing wrong. There’s still so much stigma out there. No one chooses to be a victim. We don’t choose to be mugged, or held up at the bank, or raped. We don’t choose to be hurt by the people we love, either, and yet it happens. And if one good thing is to come out of this whole ordeal, it’s that people are talking about this issue. They aren’t just asking a question anymore, that question is being answered by the voices of those who know the answer all too well. I am writing about Ray Rice to add my voice to a growing conversation that I think might actually have the power to change the way we look at this issue. I am writing this in hopes that maybe I can help even one person get the courage to take the actions to leave, so that maybe even one more person can be a survivor, and share the part of their story that will begin with #whyIleft.

Last week was quite literally a week of challenges, and by that I mean challenges on Facebook.First, my friend Marie called me out and challenged me to a Happiness Challenge. To complete the challenge successfully, I had to post three things on my Facebook wall that made me happy for a five-day period. This particular challenge was very appealing to me, because I think it’s a great idea to take a moment every day and embrace what makes me happy in my  life. Last May I started keeping a daily Gratitude Journal where I documented things that I was grateful for, so the Happiness Challenge fit right in with what I was already doing. The challenge caught on, and it was incredibly refreshing to see lists of things that made my friends happy every day when I scrolled through my News Feed.
The other challenge that has been very popular lately is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects a person’s nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease is ultimately fatal. The rules of the challenge state that, once challenged, people will dump a bucket of ice water on their heads within 24 hours of being called out and make a $10 donation to the ALS Association for research, or donate $100 if they fail to complete the challenge within the allotted time.
I watched through the week as friend after friend uploaded videos of themselves taking the Ice Bucket Challenge. Then my boyfriend was challenged, and it was decided that he would do it at a birthday party we attended last Sunday. It seemed like the perfect scenario: we would already have a large bucket of ice that a keg was going to be placed in, so the water was getting used regardless, and there was a hot tub for post-challenge. At some point I decided that I wanted to take part in this, and he obligingly challenged me in the video. Here’s the highlight of it, the moment when the water was dropped.
The thing that I liked about both of these challenges is that they both promoted doing something positive. The Happiness Challenge required focus on what was good, even if someone was having an especially crappy day. And the Ice Bucket Challenge is promoting awareness and raising funds to hopefully cure a terrible disease that could literally impact anyone. I think that both challenges did something good and I’m glad I was included in them!
 

Two weeks ago, I hit a major milestone: my thirtieth birthday. While a lot of people dread this particular birthday, I was looking forward to it immensely, feeling more than ready to leave my twenties behind. For the most part, they were good years, and I certainly learned a lot about myself and about life. But as I say often, I do love a fresh start, and the beginning of a new year of my life that is also the next decade in my life makes me feel all sorts of excited for what’s to come.
If I had been asked, when I turned twenty, where I thought I would be by the time I was turning thirty, I know that I would have had a far different vision for myself than what reality is. In some ways, things are better than I could have dreamed: my professional life has really taken off since moving to Washington four years ago, and my thirtieth birthday coincided with the first day in an exciting new job at work. Other things are not as great as I’d hoped for, I admit. I didn’t really see myself living alone in a two-bedroom apartment with a parking space barely big enough to fit a skateboard, but that’s where I am now. Maybe it’s not glamorous, but not everything in life is.
When I was in my twenties, I was insecure and codependent, and wasn’t really sure who I was or what value (if any) I held. But in the last few years I have grown to be confident, self-sufficient, successful, and driven. I definitely don’t have all the answers…but, really, who does? I’ve moved from the girl I was in my early twenties, who was constantly seeking out validation of her own self-worth and who felt she would finally be happy if she could just have more money, or lose more weight, or whatever the goal of the moment was, to basking in the moment and enjoying every day for all it has to offer. I wake up every day thinking of how lucky I am for all that I have, instead of wishing for things that aren’t yet mine.
Where I am even just two weeks into being thirty, is the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I continually reflect on and feel grateful for the love of my family, boyfriend, friends, and kitties: the people (and pets) that make life so wonderful. I’m grateful for the experiences of my twenties that shaped who I am today, and for the lessons that I learned along the way. I believe that I have an extremely bright future and am excited to see what great things the next year holds for me. And I anticipate that by the time I’m leaving my thirties behind, my life will be more amazing than I ever could have dreamed of.

Watching the sun set on my 30th birthday