Life has been really busy, and I have not had a lot of time to post to my blog as I had hoped/intended. So here’s a dump of life updates!
We have an adult & high school graduate in the house! Noah turned 18, got a tattoo, and graduated high school. We don’t say p-words in our house, but we are really ROUD of him.
This is a bit older but I haven’t posted on the blog about this, we have 5 chickens! We got them when they were about a week old and tiny (so this pic with the cat is old) and they are probably about 10 weeks old now and beginning to really look like adult chickens.
We sadly had to say goodbye to our cat Lokie. I adopted him in 2004 and they guessed he was about a year and a half old, which would have put his birthday sometime around August 2002. 2002-2022, almost 20 years old. Lots of 2s. We had just celebrated 18 years together.
I knew his time would eventually come, and that’s quite old for a cat, but it is still hard when it does come. And I thought it would be rough, but honestly it was even harder to say goodbye than I expected. I think there are a few reasons for that. I was 17 when I got him, so I’ve had him my entire adult life, and more than half of my whole life. And I think there’s something intimate about a pet. He was there for all my highs and all my lows. No matter how my day went, I could always count on coming home and him greeting me at the door, and sitting on me when I sat down, and laying on or next to me when I went to bed. It’s jarring not to have that anymore.
He needed me when we adopted him. From his fearful behaviors with belts and brooms, he had been mistreated by his previous family. In 18 years, we never hit him with a broom, but he was always afraid when we brought it out and he never forgot.
And I needed him, too. My previous cat had just died and I had a hole in my heart and love to give. And he gave so much love in the years I got to spend with him.
It is hard to say goodbye and we have so much love to give and hated the sound of a quiet house without some furry creature in it.
So we got a dog. Found him at the same humane society I adopted Lokie from all those years ago.
We don’t know what kind of dog he is. His coloring is very Red Heeler, but he is the size of a Corgi or Dachshund. Maybe one day we will get a genetic test to see what he has.
His name at the Humane Society was Red, and it turns out they got 3 dogs together, and they named them Red, Solo and Cup. Poor dog named Cup!
We named him Stanley because that seems like a distinguished name (way more distinguished than Cup) and Stanley seems like a distinguished pup. He’s 2 years old and super well behaved. He has been a great addition to the family and has helped us grieve Lokie.
Other miscellaneous updates: I quit a job I loved and started a new job. The new job is a career pivot for me, in helping a bunch of companies adopt DevOps practices and helping coach engineering teams on how to improve and adopt both the cloud and DevOps. It was a really unique opportunity and it was really hard to decide to quit a job I loved (and had not been at for all that long) but an opportunity like this does not come around often, and I would have regretted not trying it. So far it has been really good!
We “ran” the BolderBoulder this Memorial Day. It was so nice to have this bit of normalcy come back after 2 years of pandemic. I have been going to physical therapy for a hamstring/leg pain, so I did not run it and walked instead. Turns out I enjoy walking WAY more than I enjoy running and worrying about my times. This is probably why I like hiking. I think I’m open to doing additional 10ks but only fun ones that are walkable. I just don’t like running, and the stress/worry about time just sucks all the joy out of it.
For June I’ve decided to go off social media again. At least on my phone. Tired of scrolling away my life. Tired of seeing how horrible people are, and how this makes me feel horrible about people, too. I did this earlier this year in March, and I am just not so sure social media was ever a good idea. I will try to spend more of my downtime working on projects I want to get done, and posting here. So if you care at all about what is happening in my life (it’s ok if you don’t! it’s fairly boring!), follow along here for the month of June. (for info on how to follow blogs, check out this post)