Zorro

A few years ago, I was in the middle of my first year teaching, just barely afloat. I'm sure most of you have heard the saying "the first year's the hardest" - it's 100% truth. I remember calling my mom crying sometime during my second week just not sure how I could do this for a whole year. Of course it gets a bit easier as you get the hang of things like discipline and keeping kids engaged- you learn what works and doesn't work for your classroom. You also get huge burn out. You're exhausted- drained in a way that you've never experienced.

I was also a little bit lonely.

None of my best friends from college had wound up in the metroplex yet. I moved between three schools each day and therefore had just a few work friends. I had been desperately looking for a church and had finally found the Village, but was yet to really plug into my amazing home group that would become my family for the coming years.

I went to school. Came home. Went to bed. And repeated.

That cycle gets hard after a while.

So I thought it would be really nice to have something/someone to come home to. *insert Christian dating joke here*

Han gets it. Han always gets it.

No, I just wanted a cat. (Side note: love dogs, didn't want to have one locked up inside an apartment all day.) I had looked around for a few months and on a trip back to Waco, my mom and I visited Fuzzy Friends - an amazing no kill animal shelter.

There are several, free roaming cat rooms with a dozen or so cats each. You can wander around and just play with any cat that'll have you. This time, in a separate area, there was this funny-looking cat that had been shaved in a cage all by himself. We thought maybe he had a skin disease or didn't play nicely with others. We started talking to an employee who said, "My favorite's Zorro, he's the sweetest" and motioned to the weirdo in the corner. As soon as I opened the cage door, he had his front paws up on my shoulder and was meowing in my face. It was over. I didn't even pick him- Zorro made his choice very clear. He picked me.

Zorro was an amazing cat, right from the start. I think he might have thought he was a dog. He loved people and always wanted to be near to you, sometimes to a fault. ;) Every night when I came home, he's be right there jumping up on me and meowing like crazy before the front door was closed. He truly was what finally made my apartment into a little home of its own. 

He had some health problems about year into my having him during which I found out that he was either hit by a car when he was younger or suffered some other great trauma that left him with a diaphragmatic hernia. He had to go on special food to help his poor, messed-up innards deal with digestion, but other than that, he was healthy and happy like always. 

He did shed like crazy though, so for the summer he got a haircut. Luckily, he had no idea how silly he looked.

Every time he had to go into the vet, the techs always marveled at how he was the most easy-going and friendliest cat they'd ever met. He'd routinely rub his head against the nurses and purr while they were giving him a shot.

 When I moved away to England, my mom really wanted to send Zorro with me as a present, but it's actually extremely difficult to get a pet into the UK. I didn't want to subject such a good-natured creature to months of quarantine. So he went to live with his grandparents in Waco where he loved it. (I think he fell in love with my dad more than he ever loved me, but I don't hold it against him. My dad's pretty great.) He was also great with my two nieces- extremely patient with toddler "petting" and the like. The more people that were on the couch, the more he needed to be touching all of them at once.

My first trip back home after moving abroad was Christmas 2013 and the first thing I did upon entering our house was take a picture with Zorro. He was shell-shocked at my return, as you can see.

 We took more selfies later though:

Fast forward to a month or so ago when my mom let me know that Zorro wasn't doing well. He wasn't eating well and was lethargic and having digestion issues. My vet had warned me could eventually happen with his injuries. He lost four pounds very quickly and stopped eating all together.

He was in a lot of pain.

It's that really sucky time that you always have to deal with when it comes to owning a pet. I'm really thankful for my parents, that they were there in Zorro's last weeks, days, and minutes, loving and caring for him just as good as I could have. I hate that I never really got to say goodbye. But it's more important not to be selfish in situations like this. It's important to end suffering.

When I think about Zorro, I think about becoming an adult. A real adult who started out on her own in a new city, grew a support net, chased after the Lord, followed her passion, worked her butt off, made difficult and scary decisions- all with a cat snuggled up next to her as close as he could get. 

 Zorro, who didn't care if I got the role or was saving enough money or had a boyfriend or didn't eat any vegetables for a week. Zorro, who only cared that I loved him. And he loved me. That's all you can ask for. Being loving to him today was difficult, but it was right.

To Zorro- I love you.

Seasons

I've had a wonderful break here at home. Friends and family quality time. A fantastic short term nanny job that dropped into my lap. Opportunities to regroup physically, emotionally, mentally, and all those others -allys from the past year.

In short, I've had a lot of time and space and I've spent it caught up in two places: dwelling in past seasons of my life and anticipating future ones.

Physical settings are often strongly associated with a specific time in my life. Hewitt/Woodway (the Waco burbs for those non-Central Texans) has my mind lost in decade-old high school memories. Waco and Baylor absorb me back into that magical undergrad experience. Traveling two hours north to DFW has me caught up in the first true support net I made for myself - that dear time and place where I had to become an adult of sorts.

I love revisiting all of these places and times. Through the grace of God and really good parents, I was able to navigate all three of these seasons fairly well. Each gave me cherished memories, relationships, and learning experiences. (In fact, I'm still learning from my time as a 17 year old.)

However, spending months amongst these places comes with strings attached in the form of heavy nostalgia. For me this leads to a kind of sweet melancholy. You can only engage so closely with former successful versions of your life for so long before a little bit of mourning comes into play. There are a few "what ifs" and some "if onlys" that will always be there, but there's also a lot of "I wish I still" and "I had no idea how good I had it."

See, the whole concept of seasons is not one of the things they warn you about when it comes to being an adult.

Of course there'll always be hundreds of people shouting out the normal words of advice:
"Use sunscreen now, unless you want skin cancer and crows' feet at 40."
"Whatever you do, stay out of credit card debt."
"Change that box of baking soda in your fridge."

In those three years out of college, I became really good at adjusting to typical adult things: budgeting, paying bills on time, getting my car's oil changed frequently, making it to work a few minutes early, eating green leafy foods, not letting my cat die (even though he tried kinda hard once).

But I was so unprepared for seasons. And I still am.

How do you mourn an era of your life? Is it ok to do that?

Why can't things be the same? Why can't you ever truly go back?

What if you don't want to move on yet?

No matter how perfect my current season looks to be, I'll always have an ache in the parts of my heart devoted to past versions of that current season.

I'll never have the metabolism or dance ability of senior year of high school again.
I'll never have the excitement of living with my best friend in the middle of Baylor campus again.
I'll never have the exact meeting of circumstances that made working at GFAA such pure joy again.

I don't want to go back and completely relive these times, but I miss the gifts they gave me that only existed for that certain period of time. The freedom of college, the naivety of high school, the dreams of a young graduate - these things all have expiration dates. Sometimes it seems simpler to go back before they became the spoiled milk in the fridge (that you didn't notice because of you always remember to change your baking soda box).

No matter how this writing is coming off, it's not a depressing thing. It's definitely bittersweet and a bit sobering maybe, but rediscovering old seasons for me has mainly been a roadmap of God's blessings throughout the last ten years of life. Seeing how much I've been provided for, how much grace has been extended my way - it's easy to get a little lost in it. But it's a beautiful kind of lost.

Dr. Seuss (as always) hits the nail on the head.

On top of all this sentimentality, my summer is a holding pattern of sorts in waiting for my final year of grad school to begin. I'm in the middle of my "London season"...but I'm not in London! It's strange to be missing this grad school season while I'm still in the midst of it.

I also can't stop my brain from imagining its aftermath. There are so many open ended questions for my next season and that bothers me. I get overwhelmed at the too-many options my roadmap shows for a year from now. What if I pick wrong? Move to the wrong city? Bet on the wrong opportunity? What if there are no opportunities?

Just like George RR Martin's readers, I desperately want to be assured that my fan theories are correct and that things are headed the way I want them to go. Or in the very least that my next book will be greater than its predecessors (but hopefully with a lot less violent deaths than George is like to put in).

Also, none of this tool.

Ultimately though, worry is eclipsed by excitement. My anxiousness over the possibilities doesn't match my glee over having them.

And I'm sure a few years down the road, a part of me will long for that lazy, Texas summer I got to spend not caught up in the problems of my present, but instead dreaming about the memories of my past and the secrets of my future.

To the beautiful bittersweetness of seasons,

p.s. - I made a little something about some of the many activities I actually have been up to this summer. I love you so much, Wacotown.

The Final Days

I set all the travel notifications.

I've eaten all the delicious Texas food.

I packed my life into 5 suitcases (3 big/2 little if you're a detail person).

I even shot a goodbye tour of Waco with the lovely Casen:

Backtracking to a few weeks ago, my homegroup from The Village threw me a going away party. I've been so incredibly blessed by this group of people. I could never put into words what they've done for my heart and what the Lord has shown me through their grace, patience, and love. Thank you to Janet, Marc, Kate, Jeremy, Hannah, Cory, Jody, Baron, Dan, Worris, Kristin, the Allens, the Wrens, the McCords, the Grahams, and everyone else that I had the pleasure of fellowshipping with at the Oglesby abode these past 2.5 years. I love you so!

A few photographic highlights from the night:

For the party, my friends had written me letters to open while I'm in London. I in turn made them each a copy of this:

And what was on this cd, you ask? Not to worry, I made a track listing (ignore the red squiggles just like I do):

It's a strange, extremely eclectic mix, but hey, every song means something to me. Just be glad I restrained myself and didn't include any 1D.

I came back home from DFW with an extremely full heart and a need to do lots of organizing, lots of packing, and lots of procrastinating from doing those other two things. (#Netflix) Luckily you can only stare at your computer screen for so long until your eyes rebel and force you on to other, more important tasks. 

One thing you never think you're going to run out of is luggage tags. Pro tip: If you do, just use it as another opportunity to buy something to showcase your obnoxious state pride.

This past week, I headed back up to DFW for some last minute quality time with a few very important people. It feels like I've been driving this I-35 stretch so many times my car should be able to autopilot itself there by now. The journey is always worth it to see these wonderful friends.

I'm spending my last few days here in lovely Waco running errands, basking in the smog-free sunlight, racking up phone bills by calling London at 3 a.m. to figure out utilities at my new place, enjoying my family, and assuring Zorro that "I'll be back before he knows it so no need to fall into a deep depression over my leaving." 

Either he doesn't believe me or doesn't care. I can't tell.

On Thursday, my BFFAE (google it) Emily will drive me up to DFW where I'll fly off for the beginning of an adventurous two years. It's very fitting for Em to drop me off since our Summer 2011 trip to London reminded me beyond a doubt of how much I loved this city and wanted to live, work, and study in it. If she could only stow away in my suitcase, life would be perfect.

There are two - count 'em two - Friends references above.

To my addiction of making photo collages,