My good cat Cricket

She rarely ever wakes me up at night!

A little scamp...

My cat LadyBug is a little scamp. Or my husband calls her another name that I shouldn't print here. The problem is she keeps me awake a good portion of the night. It all begins about 5 minutes after lights out - she comes up onto the bed with me and starts pawing at my face. Or, she will start knocking things off my bedside table, or she will go elsewhere in the room and make any kind of noise so that I will get up. Usually she finds some paper or something and paws and scratches at it incessantly. Believe me, it is very loud and unpleasant.

So what I do is I get up and go downstairs with her and feed her a small can of Fancy Feast. My other cat Cricket will usually come along to see what we're doing and have a little nosh too. Then LadyBug will eat only a small portion of the food, and then leave the rest. Also, I usually have to sit with her while she eats.

After I go back to bed, sometimes as little as 20 minutes later she is at it again: knocking things over, scratching my face, etc. So I go downstairs again with her. This time she will not eat what is sitting there. It has to be fresh. I try anything to make her happy so she will let me sleep. Tuna, treats, etc.

Recently, she doesn't even want to eat at all. I go down to feed her and she will just look at it and turn up her nose. Sometimes she won't even come with me into the kitchen; she will just watch from afar. And when I try to go get her, she will run and hide underneath the kitchen table.

I cannot figure out what her problem is. I have tried playing with her for awhile before bed (to tire her out), I have tried shutting her in a cage at night (but she rattles on it so I can't sleep through that either), I have tried shutting her out of our room (but she just scratches at the door and I can't sleep through that). I am now thinking of giving her some kind of sedative before bed. I don't want to; but I need to get sleep!

On top of that, my dog Treif usually needs to go potty at least once during the night. So when I do that, that will stir up LadyBug again and she will be all over me.

I realize that my getting up and dealing with her is just reinforcing her behavior. However, not dealing with her is worse to me. I don't like finding all my stuff on the floor in the morning, or finding papers with claw marks on them lying around. I can't sleep through the scratching sounds on the door or the rattling of the cage.

My husband says to shut her in the garage where we can't hear her, but it is not a heated garage. It is way too cold, and she is an old cat. That would be cruel.

So I continue with lack of sleep every day and try to make up for it on the weekends.

My Mother

Wasn't she pretty? This picture was taken around 1960 - she is holding my sister.

As I get older I am getting into looking at old pictures and reminiscing. We all look so young. I especially marvel over ones of me as a teen and young adult, when I thought I was really fat, when actually I looked quite attractive. What was I thinking? I wish I had realized then how I actually looked. The mind is a powerful thing, making you "see" what is not actually there.

Work Regrets

Years ago I worked as a Research Technician for a woman in the field of dentistry. I had graduated from college relatively late in life (early 30's) and it took me a year to find a job in a research lab, and she hired me. It was very low-paying but I was happy to have a job.

Just a few days into the job, I realized that this woman was going to be very difficult to work for. She was not liked by any of the other researchers in the lab, and she did not treat me well. I hung in there because I needed the job and did not want to spend another year looking. Also, she could be a nice person sometimes, and I think I clung to that. In hindsight, I think she had major mental problems (narcissism and a tendency to be passive-aggressive).

Anyhoo, to this day I still try to examine what happened with her and why I stuck around for so long. I even moved to another state to continue working for her. By this time (2 years) we had developed a working relationship that was tolerable, or so I thought. I think I was lying to myself. Looking back, I don't think going home and crying and dreading to go to work every Sunday evening was very healthy. I remember even having two fights with her where she stormed out of the lab and left me crying.

Finally after almost six years of working for her, I just lost it. I knew that there was an opening in a lab that a friend of mine knew about and I grabbed it. Then, I panicked. Instead of going to her and calmly telling her I was leaving, I E-MAILED her my resignation. She was furious and barely spoke to me the rest of the time I was there (about a month). After all those years slaving for her and putting up with her unusual personality (she continued to piss people off even in her next position) I got NOTHING - no thanks for your hard work, let's keep in touch, etc. In fact, when I told her I expected her to call me if she needed any help or had questions, she adamantly refused on the pretense of "not wanting to bother me in my new job". I knew better. She HATED me now, because I dared to leave her - and she no longer had any control over me.

Why, then, do I continue to think about her and wish that we could have remained friends? Do I yearn for her approval? I remember always trying to please her, but it was quite a difficult thing to do because nothing ever was good enough for her. As expected, after I left, she published a paper that I should have been an author on, but instead she bumped me to the acknowledgements. I suppose I was lucky to even get that.

I think now she works somewhere in Buffalo, N.Y. still in dentistry.

I regret so much being such a wuss all those years and letting her walk all over me. I am sure that contributed to her lack of respect for me and thus the way she treated me (like a slave).

Food Ponderings...

This is some sushi at Monaghan's Fish Market in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that my husband ate for lunch one day while we were visiting.

YUCK!!! I had a bottle of pop and a bag of potato chips instead.

My husband and I have wildly different food preferences. He likes more sophisticated food, and my preferences are more child-like. For example, mac and cheese, any kind of junk food like french fries, and lots of sweet stuff like ice cream and especially chocolate! I can't go a day without it. Whereas my husband likes wine, beer, martini's etc., I like root beer, kool-aid, juice, etc. I don't think my food tastes ever grew up, and I most probably never grew up either.

My husband likes watching the Food Network, and also shows like "Top Chef". He appreciates the chef's skill and sometimes makes comments about how good the food looks that they make. But I am not the slightest bit interested (unless it's a gooey chocolate dessert or something). Things like sushi, fish, and any other kind of seafood are completely unappetizing to me. But he loves it! It has to be kosher, though, or he won't eat it.

How do we cope with such differences? We just sometimes make separate dinners! Or if we go out to a seafood restaurant, I can get by with breaded fish and chips or something. The less it looks and tastes like a fish, the better. My husband eats whole fish, even the head! I think that is so unusual, but apparently I am the one that is in the minority, since probably more than half the world eats fish that way. I guess I just grew up sheltered in that respect. Family dinners only ever consisted of hot dogs, goulash, tuna noodle casserole, spaghetti, and sometimes pot roast on the weekends. Maybe it was because my mother worked and was too tired to try anything new or more complicated. Then, sometime during my teens she decided not to cook anymore, and from then on she and my father went to Big Boy's EVERY NIGHT for dinner. They either brought me and my siblings take-0ut from there, or we would make something simple like spaghetti ourselves. From there I never developed a taste for sophistication.

My life lately

Treif has been taking up so much of my time since he has been sick, that I have been not paying as much attention to my cats Ladybug and Cricket. Sure I feed them like I always do, but there is not as much cuddling and playing with them as there used to be. I just don't have the time anymore. I feel terrible about it.

At work, I am starting to feel pressure. I've been told we are going to apply for another grant so they need me to perform lots more qRT-PCR's and other experiments for it. So I feel like it is all up to me. Don't screw up! I am already having trouble with one of my standard curves. I do not know what is going on or if I am doing anything wrong. I never had any trouble like this before.

At home, I realize I am not keeping the house as clean as it should be. All I want to do is sit in bed with my animals and crochet or knit. The floors need mopping and vacuuming, the kitchen counters are a mess, the bathrooms are a mess, and the animal's room where I feed them is a disaster area.

I don't want to be a grown-up! Or at least I wish I was rich so I could hire someone to clean for me. And then I wouldn't have to work either. That would be great! Dream on.