I finally got around to asking my husband to go to his brother’s for a week, and it went as expected. He got upset and tried to spend one day ignoring me so he wouldn’t bother me, but that was awkward and annoying. Things came to a head when I decided to do something that I had been asking him to do for months, which pissed me off because I don’t ask him to do much since I’m pretty stubborn and determined when I make up my mind to do something and I work at it tirelessly before admitting defeat. He decided to go to his sister’s since his brother lives a couple of hours away and his sister is about five minutes away.
Best. Thing. Ever.
For the first time in years, I had the house to myself. No annoying phone noises. No disgusting smell of way-too-strong coffee. Nothing being put away wherever. It was bliss. I work worked. I house worked. I got hurt a few times, which is totally okay to me, although I could have gone without getting both hands full of broken fiberglass. My body started relaxing, so I wasn’t in constant pain like I had been for months. I could get deep breaths. Obviously, I don’t handle stress well. My husband came by and took the week’s trash out but I was sleeping. We talked daily via text, and since I have issues communicating how I feel and what I want or need, I invited him to read my blog, which he did.
I think he finally started to understand what I’ve been going through and how stressed I have been. He told his mom not to do the dishes anymore, and he changed her phone settings so it’s not making a noise for every notification. I sent him some autism websites, one focusing on meltdowns, which he found informative and helpful. Most of the time, I can’t/won’t talk to him about my ASD issues (symptoms?) and struggles without feeling extreme shame and embarrassment and major impostor syndrome.
Somewhere in the midst of my week of solitude, I decided to begin the keto diet, and I want to convert Mom’s closet into a sensory room. I am excited about both projects, although I am having a bit of trouble with each of them. More on those two topics later!
It was never a secret that my brother had undiagnosed ADHD, hyperactive type. He couldn’t sit still and was always working on something, tearing something apart, or fidgeting endlessly. School was difficult for both of us, but it wasn’t common to be treated for mental health when we were children.
After I requested a psych eval and was diagnosed with autism and ADHD well into adulthood (after Mom died), things started making sense and falling into place. Sure, I could sit and read book after book, but once I finished a book, I couldn’t tell you a thing about it, even the ending. I can say I liked the book but not why or what happened.
The trouble with having AuDHD (autism with ADHD) is I crave routine, yet routine can be terribly boring. I like to think of it as controlled chaos. My space can look like a hurricane blew through, but if you want to know where something is, I can most likely tell you unless I put it somewhere where I wouldn’t lose it. For example, I know a black Sharpie is in the bathroom closet in a box with the cabinet door handles, but I have no idea where I put the silver ones so I wouldn’t lose them.
After my doctor and I got my psych medications right and the Wellbutrin kicked in, I’ve been in downsizing and renovation mode. I think 19 years of the house looking the same is long enough! I started with Mom’s bedroom and painted it glossy black. I’ve no doubt Mom is losing her mind looking down on me, but I really like it. Trim and ceiling are going to be black as well, because you just can’t have a black room with wood-colored trim and a white ceiling. That’s silly.
Theo being helpfulThe shelf thing cleaned up nice!
After finishing most of the bedroom, I moved on to her bathroom, and I am having so much fun with it. It is black now, too, and I removed the shelf/ledge under the bathroom mirror and put it on the wall so it wasn’t in the way of the sink faucet.
The wood-colored backsplash had a recessed trim(?) the same color as the counter. Since I’m going with black and silver in Mom’s bathroom, I ordered some 1/2″ stainless steel-colored adhesive PVC piping which fit perfectly. I’m including a picture of the guest bathroom below, which has the same backsplash as Mom’s did, but a different VOG (vinyl-on-gypsum) wallpaper. I bought shiny silver contact paper for the counter and around the garden tub, which should be fun.
A peek of the old wall where the shelf/ledge was. Guest bathroom backsplash
Because I bloop, bloop, bloop all over the place, I started tackling Mom’s walk-in closet in the midst of redoing her bedroom and bathroom. I haven’t gotten very far with it, but I am downsizing in a major way, and there is only so much the living room can hold in between trash days. Considering I have zero budget, this reno could take a while, but I am finding some really good deals on Amazon. I think the most expensive thing has been the paint, which is $48 a gallon. Since I’m painting everything that doesn’t move, I’m going to need a lot of paint!
Merlin’s death threw us for a loop, especially my husband, as he was his cat. Like when Sprinkles died, I started wanting a kitten, I guess to take my mind off Merlin. My sister-in-law told us that their outdoor cat was pregnant, so I eagerly awaited Labor Day (heh, heh, heh). When the time came, SIL sent me a picture of the kittens, and I chose a little cream-colored one, who was lighter than his siblings.
Theo Corduroy
As usual, we were told he was a girl and I named him Theodora Corduroy, Theo for short. Theodora is a witch, Corduroy was a nickname Mom called my brother. Weeks later at his appointment, we found out he was a male, so switched his name to Theodore Corduroy. He got much darker as he grew and is now a blond tabby with a dark back and light tummy.
To be perfectly honest, Theo is a butthole and very manipulative. He is a biter when we are petting him, which I think is possibly over-stimulation. He’s very curious, because he’s a cat, and he shows this curiosity by rubbing his head all over me and head-butting me. He does the same when he is jealous.
When he wants people food (which he never eats), he demands attention and falls over and rolls all over the place. He has fallen off surfaces before because I couldn’t catch him in time, which never seems to phase him. He rolls around a lot.
Theo is my cat and usually gets what he wants because he is so cute and acts so lovable. He is also a total chicken and will come to me and climb into my arms when he is scared or doesn’t feel well. For some reason, all the males have chosen me. Piper is hubby’s cat, and I think that is because he is the one who “rescued” her.
Willow Cordelia
I was done getting cats. I’ve never had four before, so this was new territory. Three weeks after getting Theo, hubby comes home with a minute tortoiseshell kitten in his hand and gives her to me. I walked around the house cuddling her, thinking over having a household of five cats while being broke. I said yes, because how could I not? If I said no, she would be an outdoor cat at my SIL’s, and SIL’s boyfriend said all of them die very young because they are/get sick. Frankly, I thought she was very ugly. I named her Willow Cordelia, witches from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Horror Story, respectfully.
Having two kittens only 3 weeks apart was a chore, especially since I’m the one who takes care of them completely in the beginning. Both babies wanted to be held pretty much constantly, so I fashioned a sling out of two of hubby’s tube socks and a COVID face mask. I would usually have one in the sling and the other in my arm. When I only had one, I could still do my work while holding them.
Theo in the sling
Willow grew to be so cute and squishy, with short legs. She is a Daddy’s Girl. She is so funny and has such a personality, just like Theo. They are half-siblings with the same father. She is on her back 95% of the time, which just cracks me up, and I think it is because she has hip issues and is bowlegged. She has a very weird walk, like she can’t bend her legs properly. Again, the vet didn’t seem concerned. Like Theo, she gets jealous, especially when I am interacting with my husband. That’s her man! She is very brave, unlike her brother.
Silly Willy
Although both cats are going to be two this year, we still call them The Babies when talking about them. They have certainly spiced up our home and continue to entertain us.
Merlin Haggard
Merlin was a unicorn who left us in late 2020. There was really no one like him. We miss him so much still. At the time, we had Piper and Gandalf, both a year old. We lost Mom’s cat, Ashes, quite acutely to a blood clot the year prior. I started paying attention to a black stray who liked to lie on the porch on his back and wiggle around like he had an itch. I pretended my husband had a say in me bringing him inside because everyone needs a win sometimes.
After my husband “allowed” me to bring Merlin in, we were smitten. He is, of course, named after the great wizard, Merlin, and I chose Haggard as his middle name because of Merle Haggard. He wanted out a lot in the beginning and would cry at the screen door, but eventually he got used to being inside. He did not know how to play or purr. He didn’t see the logic in attacking a toy if it wasn’t posing a threat or edible. Vet aged him around 6 months.
I was very concerned about him not purring because that is how cats show affection and self-soothe. As time progressed, he finally purred very quietly while hubby was petting him and then started to do it more. He also became the most playful cat in the world after a year or two in his home.
Merlin loved grocery day! After unbagging the groceries, I would sit on the floor and parachute a plastic bag above, then over his head and he would bat at it frantically and just smile by showing his fangs. We played like this around 30 minutes every week. He also absolutely loved when I got up to go to the bathroom or kitchen. He would hide from me and lunge at my feet when I walked by. He followed me into the bathroom and got pets while I was in there. Sometimes, we sat in the empty bathtub together.
Merlin hiding
Most of the time, I could see him hiding from me because he wasn’t very good at it. When I didn’t see him and he genuinely surprised me, I would squeak out of surprise, which he just thought was great fun, apparently. I started being startled each time and he got so excited and would rattlesnake his tail and bounce around the kitchen. He would smile by showing us his fangs and do so only when he was happy or excited.
Show me your teeth
Merlin was truly hubby’s cat, and whenever he was going to bed, he would say, “It’s bedtime,” and Merlin would run past him and hop up on the bed and start pawing at the blacklight poster while waiting for his dad. That is something hubby just can’t get over since losing him to urinary problems at just 5 years old. His death broke both of us and we still talk about him a lot.
Like a lot of multi-cat households, we never intended to have five cats at once. The most Mom and I had were three, and five is a different beast altogether. For one thing, the babies pee so much! We have two cats who do not use the litter box, and the remaining three keep the Litter Robot running all day and night. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a cat person; I’m an animal person. Our current roundup is as follows:
Ms. Piper Paws (featured image) is a promise kept. I was finally ready for another cat after Sprinkles died, and I wanted another tuxedo. “Kitten season” starts around April, so we were looking around for tuxedo cats before Mom went back in the hospital. She was really excited to have a kitten in the house again. After she found out she wouldn’t be coming home, she told my husband to “get [me] that cat.”
The cat gods must have heard because within a week after losing Mom, we found three tuxedo kittens who were up for adoption through a rescue shelter at the pet store. I told my husband which one I wanted from a picture, and he got her while I was out with my cousin and aunt. I named her Piper Paws. Piper is a character from Charmed, and Paws is my mom’s initials.
When I opened my birthday gift and card and had my cleansing grief meltdown, my husband ran out of the room and came back holding teeny, tiny Piper. He shoved her against my chest and said to her, “Do your job,” which made me laugh. My husband can’t stand seeing me sad/crying and tries everything to make me feel better.
Gandalf the Grey
Piper needed a playmate. She had fun torturing Mom’s cat, Ashes, but he was 15 years old and just not as active as a kitten, so off to the shelter we go! There was a bundle of gray kittens in one cage, and I never had an all-gray cat, so I chose one. He got some medicine before we left, then diarrhea’d in his box on the way home, which was several miles away from the shelter.
Unfortunately for him, his first moments at home were getting a bath in the sink. Since my husband loves The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and I was going with a witch and wizard theme, I named him Gandalf the Grey. We call him Gandi or Gander.
A couple of years or so ago, Gandi came out of the litter box and started flipping and flopping all over the floor. I freaked and yelled for my husband, who recognized it was a seizure because our nephew suffers from them. It was traumatizing for everyone. He had a seizure after every single bowel movement or attempt at a bowel movement, four to five times a day.
I felt so helpless. The vet had no answers and prescribed phenobarbital, which kind of seemed to help, but I could find zero correlation between seizures and constipation in cats or humans. I started giving him Dulcolax or olive oil. After months of exhausting seizures and no answers, he stopped having them. He also stopped being constipated, but I still have no answer as to the relation between that and the seizures unless he had some blockage that he finally unblocked.
Phineas Black
After taking in a black kitten who loved rolling around on our porch, I wanted another black cat because the porch kitty, Merlin Haggard, was the bestest cat I ever had. I went through Facebook Marketplace this time and found a roughly 6-week-old black kitten about an hour from us. He is such a sweet cat and loves cuddles. I named him Phineas Nibbeus Black, from Harry Potter.
A few weeks in, we noticed something was a bit off with Phin. He wouldn’t chase the laser light but would chase everyone who was chasing the laser light when they ran by him. He was very clumsy and would run or jump into his siblings frequently. I started suspecting that he couldn’t see, and I recalled the vet never checked his vision like they did with Merlin at his first appointment. (I don’t know why they didn’t.)
I did some at-home vision tests on him and was even more convinced, but I knew for sure when he knocked out four of his teeth one day. He liked to jump up on the bathroom sink for pets when someone was in the bathroom. He miscalculated and jumped up and hit his mouth on the lip of the counter when I was in there.
We checked him and saw he was missing four of his little middle teeth. He hasn’t jumped on the bathroom sink since and relies on us putting him up there or he gets up there by jumping onto the tub and walking across the toilet tank, which my husband taught him by tapping and knocking on the surfaces.
Because of his blindness, Phin is very spoiled and very much the baby. He sleeps up by my face and only on my green blanket. After Merlin died, he started wanting held during the day. When I’m working and Phin wants held, my husband will yell for him and he will go into the room with him and lie on his chest. He and Merlin were the best of friends and I think he still misses him, as we all do.
I have anxiety. Bad. I get super anxious hearing other people talk on the phone. My husband makes all calls unless I absolutely have to talk to someone, like for my work. He even has permission to talk to our family doctor and psychiatrist for me. All of that to say, I don’t talk to family on the phone. I always got updated about family by Mom, who would talk to various family members throughout the week. Since I lived with her, I was kept in the loop. All that changed after she died. Family hung around for maybe the first year or two, but then radio silence on both our parts, save a FB group chat with some of my cousins and me.
Around the beginning of April in 2019, one of my aunts called me. She is Mom’s sister-in-law (aka “sister-in-love”), and Mom made her medical power of attorney before she died so my brother and I wouldn’t have to make hard decisions. She, of course, consulted us before making any decisions. I just love this aunt to pieces.
Anyway, my aunt called me and asked if my husband was home, and she wanted me to go to the same room as him. I did so, internally starting to panic. I begged her to please talk to him, I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. By this time, my husband was standing by me, obviously concerned. He caught me when my world fell apart once more.
My big brother (“Bub”), my childhood torturer and hero and only sibling, had a heart attack at work and was found unresponsive. He was taken to Johns Hopkins, where they did all they could, running tests and trying to normalize his temperature and checking for brain activity. He had just turned 39 the month prior.
Since Mom’s car was on the fritz and my husband didn’t think it would make it that far without issues, my cousin was going to take us over the weekend, but Bub didn’t last that long. He left behind an amazing wife and two beautiful, sweet daughters.
A couple of days before they turned the machines off, my sister-in-law called and put the phone to Bub’s ear so I could tell him goodbye. I mostly blubbered and told him I was sorry and that I loved him. He died 9 days before Mom’s death anniversary, 19 days before my birthday. I don’t celebrate my birthday anymore.
I rolled back the time and have been 29 years old for a few years. Everyone started dying after I turned 30. I lost my aunt and my dad the year I turned 30. Dad was a deadbeat, and that drama/trauma is a whole ‘nother story (complete with an Evil Stepmother). I lost Sprinkles, Mom, Ashes, and Soxers all in one year, and two uncles who were surrogate fathers. I’m just done.
I lost my mom to uterine cancer in 2014, ten days before my birthday. She wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready, but that really didn’t matter. The cancer didn’t actually kill her, even though it had metastasized to other organs. She was on chemo and contracted pneumonia while in the hospital. Honestly, I think the pneumonia was harder for both of us to deal with than the cancer: Seeing her struggle to breathe, the audible wetness of her lungs, hearing she could not resume chemo until the pneumonia was gone, which never came to pass.
Her last 2 weeks in the hospital, she endlessly worried about me and the fact that she hadn’t gotten me a birthday present. She sent my cousins out to get my present and a card, and she signed that card the best she could the day before she died. I knew nothing about this until after she was gone. I left the hospital with my gift and card but without my mom. I waited until my birthday to open them, which absolutely ripped my heart to shreds.
“I love you, you are my world (Mommy)”
All of 2014 was brutal. My tuxedo cat, Sprinkles Ricardo Blah-Blah, died in January, before Mom died. He was 16 years old. After Mom died, her cat, Ashes Penelope, didn’t cope well with Mom not being here. He suddenly dropped one terrible night, and the vet at the animal ER said it was a blood clot and they couldn’t really do anything for him. We got an adorable tuxedo kitten, Soxers McGee. He died at 5 months old from FIP. My stress level was through the roof. Due to the stress, my pancreas broke, and I’m now a type 1.5 diabetic (LADA). I don’t know if that is related to my Dandy Walker or not, as it’s not my only autoimmune disease.
Sprinkles RicardoAshes PenelopeSoxers McGee
I existed for a few years. I paid off Mom’s car and house, thanks to Mom’s work and her smart planning for my brother and me. I lived with her my entire life due to me having Dandy Walker malformation, so her house and car came to me. I would be homeless if she hadn’t always put her children first. I have a difficult time coming up with the property taxes every year, so I guess homelessness is always a possibility, unfortunately.
I really hated living here, in her house, for a long time. I redecorated the living room and changed the theme from lighthouses to pandas and tigers so I wouldn’t be reminded of her every time I walked in there. One night, in a fit of grief, I ran to her closet and buried my nose in her clothes, hoping to find her scent, to no avail. My fiancé and I remained in our bedroom at the other end of the house.
Two years after Mom died, I married the wonderful man who took such amazing care of Mom when her cancer returned. My brother walked me down the aisle. I chose In Loving Memoryby Alter Bridge as the Bride-Mother of the Bride dance and fully intended to dance with my aunt/Mom’s sister. I crumpled as soon as the song started and couldn’t do it, so my aunt and my bridal party had a big, weepy huddle while the song played.
I didn’t know another death in the family was going to shake my foundation like Mom’s death did.
Cari R Esta 