intrinsic

her heels click on the sidewalk
adding tempo to the sound
of a city living hard
this ain’t no one bar town

the summer is quickly passing. come fall though, i’ll actually be a little disappointed to see it go. we’ve been enjoying all the opportunities a home with a backyard has to offer. every night christopher and i are both off we’ve been grilling and then enjoying our dinners outside.

evening is my favorite time of the day at my home. as the sun sets on the front of our home, the backyard stays cool and quiet under the patio. i’ve been spending afternoons outside reading on the patio, watching storms in the north and having meals with christopher. any afternoon storms have usually passed through by the time we’re ready to eat and it’s perfect weather to spend some time together outdoors. taking our meals out the small outdoor table, we’ve been spending more time together than I think we have in the past. this summer has really been wonderful.

and all the things i’ve tried to say
were never easy to explain-
they were always meant for you.

and all the memories that were made
for years and years
i’ve chased this day-
they were always for you.

this summer is going by way too fast. i’m happy about that in one way: fall is near. i love me some new mexico autumn.

i did however, spend a lovely week in florida with kira. i came back on tuesday after a return trip to universal studios (and harry potter world!!!), my first trip to disney ever, the beach and a truly amazing sun burn. don’t necessarily believe a sunscreen when it says “waterproof”. also, don’t ever doubt that your legs won’t burn because they never have before. they are now an itchy nightmare.
i love spending time with kira, either in NM or FL, but it makes me realize how much i miss her the rest of the time. :/ yay to the internet for keeping in touch, right?

i head back to work tomorrow after a week and a half off. time off just emphasizes how much i wish i was independently wealthy and never had to work… i definitely needed a break. i was starting to feel a little burnt out and apathetic. i seem to get that way about once a year, but it times up well with a change in my work situation or a vacation. lucky for me, it was vacation time. i’ve been orienting a new hire, which i always love doing, but have been particularly challenged by this one. it’s difficult to orient someone who has been a nurse already because what may be most important to you might not be as important to the new hire. for example, i am a documentation fiend. i think my charts are thorough and clear documents of the time my patients spent in the ER. For my new hire, this doesn’t seem to be as big of an issue. i think that i need to just let it go. i’ve spoken my peace and if she doesn’t take it to heart like i do- that’s cool. i can’t practice nursing for other people. if i could, maybe i’d get a pay raise. Yay!!

i’ll end this on the wishful thinking about a pay raise.

this is a song about the way things are.
this is a song about the scary things you see from the corner of your eyes-
don’t you wonder why?
we never talk about the future;
yeah, we never talk about the past anymore.
we never ask ourselves the questions to the answers that nobody even wants to know;
i guess the honeymoon is over-
so much for the afterglow

Gus is dopey. He loves everyone.

Mannie is spiteful. She hates Gus. Stripey is okay. Usually.

Stripey is clever. He is cool with everyone- BUT DON’T FUCK WITH HIM.

These three guys have been driving me nuts and making me laugh for the last month and a half. Mannie can’t NOT growl at Gus, which means Gus can’t NOT chase her around the house. Stripey beats the shit out of Gus when he gets in Stripey’s face, but otherwise couldn’t care less about him. I think Gus is mentally challenged and he just loves everyone and wants to play. He jumps over Stripey, chases me up and down the stairs, plays with toys and MUST have access to my closet at all times. Mannie had become much more aloof lately, avoiding me and taking to the little cat cave we bought years ago and she ignored. She hasn’t been upstairs in weeks, preferring to stay downstairs and sulk. I’m sad about that. I didn’t mean to upset her when I brought Gus home. I didn’t even mean to acquire Gus, but one head nudge through his cage bars and I was hooked. At least Stripey seems to be doing alright. He’s a pretty laid back, amiable fellow.

These cats are more like people than some of the people I know…

it’s been a long time little blog- but i’ve had a lot on my mind and as much as i talk outloud, it’s hard for me to put words to my thoughts.

right before mother’s day last month i (and several coworkers) found another coworker dead in the parking lot at work. there’s still some uncertainty as to what happened- but he probably either accidentally or intentionally overdosed on prescription medications around 24 hours before. i say “we” found him, but it was actually his family after searching all over the city for him- they found him. their screams are right up there at the top of my list of “things i won’t ever forget for as long as i live”.

i deal with dead people all the time. for the most part, that’s okay- but when it’s someone you’ve worked beside for years, it touches something much deeper. was he my friend? not really- we were friendly and had a close working relationship. in the setting of my workplace, we were tight. he always greeted me with a smile and hug and usually something sarcastic to say. he was great at his job and an asset to our team- and one day he was gone.

i’ve been thinking about that part a lot over the last month: the gone-ness. people live, they breathe, they think, they love, they fight- and one day, all that remains is an empty space. sure, the memories and affection one has for the deceased lasts far longer than his or her physical presence- but that presence is difficult to get over. i’ve been thinking a lot about the finality of death and the almost futility of life. death is hard for an atheist. religious people have an afterlife to fall back on. they’ll see the dead later, after this life is over. death is not the end for them. for me, death is it. there is nothing out there after that.

and, for lack of something less eloquent, that scares the shit out of me. while, intellectually, i’ve known this for awhile now, i don’t think it’s actually occurred to me what that means in real life. the last time i close my eyes, the last time my brain fires a synapse- that’s it for me. i’m gone and i won’t have any concept of what’s going on after. there’s no floaty afterlife for me to sit on clouds and chat with my grandmother, there’s no jumping into the next body of the newest baby around- i’m just over.

and so was my coworker. so was my grandfather when i was 14. so was a friend in high school. so will my parents be someday. so will chris. that freaks me out as much as thinking about myself dying- the people i love and cherish will some day just be gone like the lights after a switch is flipped.

i don’t like that feeling. i want to stay around forever. i want my family and friends to be forever. i thought i had it all figured out when i realized i was an atheist. i suppose i have more to figure out on my non-spiritual walk… and certainly more to come to terms with.

people always say “I hope he’s at peace where ever he is” when people die. i just hope he was at peace with the lights went out; i hope i can be too (but i really hope that’s a long, long way away).

we’ve been living happily in our new home for over 2 weeks now. it’s slowly starting to actually feel like ours. there’s still a weird neutrality in the place- i don’t feel like it’s someone else’s but i’m not sure it’s fully ours yet. our stuff is here, we’re here, but there isn’t much else to this place yet. it was a little bittersweet leaving the apartment. i was pleased to GTFO but we spent 3 years there and it was our first place together. there were so many memories shoved into those 3 rooms- but i was (and still am) very pleased to have our OWN place. i’m in love with this place. :)

to continue our weird life change- we also got a new kitty! Gus is our newest addition and is super cute. we had always wanted a 3rd cat when we bought a house but had planned to wait a little longer than 2 weeks… it was love at first sight though as little Gus ran up to be in his cage and Petsmart and started purring and loving on me immediately. and so, the newest addition to the Garofali-Van Vorous household…

the word came today: we’re no longer squatters.

for the last week or so, we’ve been semi-squatting in our own home. painting, cleaning and repairing a place that wasn’t officially ours. we closed on march 30th. the first time. due to some lender snafus, we had to resign the next day on the 31st. after expecting keys the 31st, we then had to wait until april 2nd to get keys to give enough time for funding to go through, the seller to sign papers and the deed to be filed with the county. well, turns out both the seller and the county was closed on the 2nd for good friday (it’s jesus’ fault…). friday, after signing the THIRD time (because my name was misspelled- which i notified the title company about TWO TIMES), our realtor followed us to our house to help us break in. well, not break in so much as take the keys and open the place up. which was sanctioned by the sellers’ realtor.

then we began squatting. chris changed the locks. we cleaned. changed the light bulbs. vacuumed, cleaned carpet. got that bitch squeaky clean. Monday, we started the painting. In three days, we’ve managed to complete the entire downstairs and two of the three rooms upstairs. i’m hoping to tackle the offensive polka dot room on saturday and strip that monster of it’s polka dotted-ness.  chris and i have done 99% of the painting ourselves. it has been a lot of work, but it’s been a great three days of bonding and spending time working together. it’s been terrific, if not exhausting and arm breaking. i’ve really enjoyed working with chris and working together towards making *our* place exactly as we want it.

today, we got the official word that funding went through. the selling bank still has to sign one more document (which takes them approximately a year per page, it seems), but the mortgage company wired the money, so it’s all good. we don’t have the “keys” yet- but we kinda took care of that problem ourselves.

every time i walk inside our house, i’m in complete awe of the fact that it’s OUR house. we can do exactly what we want, when we want and how we want. chris can play his guitar without fearing he’s annoying the neighbors. i can watch movies with our sub-woofer on and not shake the ceiling below us. our neighbors are a nice, normal family- not a bunch of young guys who break into their own apartments and run up and down the stairs all night. the house is on a quiet cul de sac, where i won’t hear sirens blaring every time i crack the patio door. and my back porch… i can’t wait to spend the summer reading out on the back patio until sun sets. we hope to move our crap over next week and i can’t wait. i have such a hard time tearing myself away from the house each night when we lock it up to head back to the apartment. it already feels like a place we can call home. i can’t wait to make that official.

i was feeling entirely too superstitious to mention it before now, but i did. i bought a house. okay- so chris and i both bought it together. i have to give him his credit where credit is due.

we’re in the final stages of acquiring said house. our home inspection is next week. finalizing all the bits and pieces with the lender is coming up. and then, we just sign our life away one hundred times in a row as early as next week (or as late as the week or two after).

i am completely ecstatic about the upcoming move; we got such a beautiful house and for such a great deal. it’s completely beyond my wildest dreams. i’m having mixed emotions about leaving our apartment though. it’s been good to us the last three years. we’ve built so many memories together here and i feel strange about abandoning it. we moved in together at a time where everything in my life was changing. as weird as my life outside the apartment was, i knew i always had a place of my own, with christopher, to go back to at the end. will this new place feel as much like home? will we be as happy there as we are here? it’s also probably the biggest decision i’ve ever made (and the biggest purchase i’ve ever made). the enormity of the responsibility we’re about to undertake is not lost upon me either in my fit of excitement. at least here- if something goes wrong, someone else bears the responsibility. in a house- it’s all on us.

that’s not a bad thing by any means. i’m more excited about moving into our new home than i have been about anything yet in life. as good as this apartment has been to us, we always knew it was a means to an end. temporary, a place to settle while we waited for something better. this place has done a fitting job of just that. and our new place? we have the rest of our lives to build memories- it’s not temporary by any means. this new place will be home too.

one of the greatest moments in ER history:

an EMS call comes in from our local fire/rescue guys. they ask for a doctor to take the report (usually, nurses take them) because they want to divert to our nearest psychiatric hospital instead of having to medically clear someone in our ER first (and potentially tie up a bed all night). those guys had our best interests at heart, the dears.

so this gentleman, with a history of psychiatric disorders, has been off his meds for awhile and was found talking to himself and scratching the wall outside of a mcdonald’s. no medical complaints, no signs of any injuries and no risk to self or others (not wanting to harm himself or anyone else).

doctor’s reply? “get that man a big mac, fries, a coke and divert to Psych”
paramedic replay? “that’s funny actually, we got him a big mac, fries and some milk, is that ok?”

i haven’t laughed so hard in ages.

i think chris put it better than i could’ve when he wrote about how much he loved Sadie. but i loved Sadie too.

we met when i was 17, she was probably 12. it was always the same with Sadie; everytime i pulled into the driveway she trotted up to my car, complaining in that broken meow that she did NOT have enough food. i always picked her up, hugged her and smiled when she began purring instantly. chris calls Stripey a gratifying cat- so was Sadie. they’re a lot alike, i think. but, she hated other cats, frightening Stripe every time he dared go near the front door. she was protective of her food dish. other cats better not go near it while she stood watch.

but she was always so sweet to us. crotchety and territorial maybe, but always so happy when i pulled up to the house. chris and i debated taking her with us when we moved out- but it wouldn’t have been fair to her. she loved rolling around in the front yard, oblivious to the dirt she was collecting in her beautiful tortoiseshell coat. she loved roaming the yard- always careful to stay close to home. she wouldn’t have liked living inside. she certainly couldn’t have tolerated Mannie and Stripey either.

i’m sad to let her go- sad i won’t see her trot up to me next time we visit his mom, but i know Sadie was loved and died loved, after a long, happy life. i’ll always remember her. i’ll always remember that voice and i’ll always remember laughing while she rolled around on the ground, purring and so happy.

we’re embarking into some unknown territory right now.

home buying.

we’ve found one we’re really interested in and are in the process of seeing how our offer goes, but i’m pretty encouraged we can find something at a reasonable price. we’re in no real rush, we can just qualify for a nice sized loan and might be able to score that $8000 tax credit- so we’re taking a shot at it.  it’s weird place- real estate- full of strange language and games that i don’t fully understand. i’m learning a great deal, but it’s still so confusing. periods of a deep lull followed by periods of rapid change and action. but mostly the boring lull part where you don’t hear anything and wait around hoping.

there is a lot of high anxiety going on regardless. i’m hoping, hoping, hoping this house thing pulls together- but i’m trying to be realistic about it. we’ll see…