kittens and creams

luke* and i took in two three-week-old kittens last sunday and the past week has been quite possibly the most difficult time of my life.  (oh, the drama!)  while i anticipated bottle feeding kittens would be hard, it is much, much more trying than i thought.  it's a lot like having little twin human babies, except that these babies are so dependent that they can't even "eliminate" without being stimulated with a wet cotton ball.  so, i've spent the last week nervous and overwhelmed, chained to the apartment because i was too afraid to leave them home alone.  i tend to suffer from pretty intense cabin fever when i stay inside all day (for days), so i cried and felt hopeless and watched a lot of maury's paternity tests on daytime tv.  maybe i had postpartum depression from the arrival of our new cats.  additionally, my hopelessness was most definitely compounded by the outbreak of what very well could have been** ringworm on my neck.  yes, my neck.  so disgusting.  it made me even more insane because ringworm is just about the only disease that is communicable between humans and cats, and, with a grand total of four felines in the house these days, i washed my hands almost every five minutes, praying i wasn't accidentally infecting the very things i was supposed to be caring for.  it's also another reason i stayed inside, as having ringworm-esque rashes on your neck tends to be a tad humiliating.

blarg.

i'm better now, i think.  i've gotten into a rhythm with the kittens, and we've now worked out a regiment that allows them to sleep for a couple hours at a time, meaning i can take a walk to a neighborhood coffee shop and write, which i've been meaning to do for weeks.  coming out of last week, i realized that not once in the months since i graduated, or quite possibly in the years i was in college, did i sit down and really think about what i want to do with my time and with my life.  i'm sure now that academically, i want to continue with anthropology, and i'm applying to grad school to do just that.  however, in the interim, i need to come up with something that makes me happy, because most of things i've been doing to keep myself busy recently (with the exception of my volunteering) haven't been cutting it.  i don't want to feel like i'm wasting my life, but working as a grunt in retail doesn't really lead me to believe i'm doing anything else (and as countless resumes and interviews have proven, finding a "real job" is damn near impossible right now).  anyway, long story shorter, i'm going to start actively working on myself.

*i've decided i don't have the energy to make a code name spreadsheet, so you all will now have the opportunity to learn the real names of everyone i know.

**i say "could have been" for several reasons: a) i didn't go to a doctor, and therefore, as my grandpa always reminds me, i can't ever be sure; b) i'd rather not have had ringworm; c) it did, however, go away when i used anti-fungal cream twice a day.