Owen's Arrival

For a long time now, I've wanted my own cat, and Saturday, I got one! This is Owen, the newest addition to our little family. He's an 8-month-old tabby who already weighs close to 11 pounds. He's going to be a big guy, that's for sure, but that's OK. The nicest cat I ever owned (out of the 3 my family had when I was growing up) was a giant orange male named Watson. He was a gentle giant, though; my mom recently reminded me that I used to dress him up in doll clothes, and he barely batted an eyelash.

Owen is kind of a firecracker right now. When he's awake, he's all up in your business, dancing on the keyboard, head butting your hand away from the mouse (even now, as I type this), but I love him already. What can I say? I'm an unabashed cat lover and a sucker for those big green eyes.

Heat Wave

For the past three days here in Chicago, the high temperature has climbed into the upper 50's and lower 60's. Need I remind you that it's January? The picture above was taken a little more than a week ago, in northern Wisconsin. While I doubt that it's as warm up there as it is here, I will say that every drop of snow and ice in the city has disappeared, and I'm pretty sure I saw a robin poking around, wondering why he didn't get the memo that spring was starting 3 months early this year.

Many people are enjoying the balmy weather, but to me it's just disturbing. I know it's more of a fluke than a sign of impending doom, but I can't help but feel like Al Gore is hovering behind me, shaking his head. It's disturbing, you know, to feel hot when you wear a jacket outside just a few weeks after Christmas. Maybe if I were in Florida, sure, but... Chicago? Come on. I'm sort of cringing here, waiting for the ground to start smoldering and the waves of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to start lapping at either end of our block. Maybe I'll go recycle something to make myself feel better...

Irresolute

Over the past few days, I've thought up myriad New Year's resolutions for myself: learn Italian, get a cat (see photo above), make soup every weekend so that I can stop eating the crap out of a can during the week. I know that most of these are just sort of fleeting aspirations. While I may make an effort to follow through on one or two of them, I don't see myself becoming a maestro of the Italian language or an expert soup-maker. I do have one other resolution that I want to take more seriously, though, and that is to let it go. "It" can be almost anything, anything that makes me angry, anxious or annoyed. So that makes a lot of its. Basically, I want to stop making myself crazy over things I can't control. Simple, right? This might be the most challenging resolution I've ever made for myself, but I also think it's the most important and will provide the most benefit if I succeed in releasing (even the tiniest bit) the death grip I always want to have on my life.

So there it is. I wish you all the luck in the world in sticking with your own resolutions this year, but even more I wish you happiness and acceptance once you realize those resolutions weren't all that important, and you simply let them go.