Meet Sofía and Claire

The girls moved in with us at the start of the school year this year. As you can see they've settled in nicely.



Originally I had intended to let my students name them. We did in fact hold a contest to choose new names. After much debate (in Spanish of course... well almost) they chose Nevaeh (Ni-vay-ah) which is heaven spelled backward, and Diamond, because Claire has an orange spot on her forehead. Shortly after the contest I talked to my friend Amanda. During high school her best friend and she had French names in their French class: Sophie and Claire. So we kept the names they had when we found them at the Humane Shleter.



Sofía (on top) is 2 years old. She had never lived with other cats, so she was quite leery of letting Claire get close. She spent most of the first month at home on top of the refridgerator. She would sleep there all day, but was by no means shy. When anyone would walk in the room she would go to the edge of the fride to get their attention. She enjoyed being petted so much that she would lose all sense of space and just fall right off the edge, purring all the way to the floor. She is now quite comfortable at home, and rarely jumps back up to her perch on the fridge. She is so comfortable in fact, that she will fall asleep almost anywhere. Once asleep it is sometimes difficult to rouse her. She snores, she squeaks, and she twitches without a clue as to what is going on around her.



Claire is 4 years old. She is a little smaller. She doesn't have Sofía's pretty coloring or pretty blue eyes. With the strange orange spot right on top of her head we sometimes refer to her as "the ugly one." She has a few bad habits that have helped her adopt a few other nicknames. First, she has a talent for swinging her tail just beyond the limits of the litter box. You can imagine the rest. Her great joy in life is drinking from the faucet. She will sprint from any place in the house the second she hears the water running. The habit unfortunately has developed into a serious drinking problem. She enjoys the running water so much that she does not know when to stop. She'll drink her fill, jump down from the sink, and promptly vomit on the floor. We've grown accustomed to her weak stomach. She is allowed to drink from the faucet on rare ocassions only, and we quickly cut her off.

They've been a lot of fun. We keep their hair cleaned up as much as we can, and we keep allergy medicine on hand in case our guests have problems.

Do you have a New Year's Resolution for me?

As I look ahead at the coming year and reflect on 2007, I can see a lot of things I could be doing better. I haven't been to the gym in months. Most of my major muscle groups have gone into atrophy. I slouch much of time because the strings I call muscles in my back cannot bear the weight of my scrawny arms for an entire day.

I don't help out at home. I do take care of a few things like cleaning the litter box and vacuuming in a mad frenzy before guests arrive, but Chris really takes care of me. Yesterday I was putting a few things away in the kitchen and realized I didn't even know where to put away the can opener! We've lived here since August!

I am out of touch with some of my closest friends and family. In 2007 a close friend of mine underwent a not-so-minor surgery. Rather than send flowers or visit her in the hospital, I had not idea. I found out when her work email sent back an auto-response telling me she'd be out of the office for 3 days. A few months later she had another surgery. I found out in the same way. She lives just a few blocks from me.

I'd like to say that I'm really not the terrible person described above, but the fact is those are true stories.

In the past I haven't really made New Year's Resolutions, not seriously at least. But it is glaringly obvious that a change is necessary. In fact, the need is so obvious that yesterday people started suggesting New Year's Resolutions for me: "How about you call me more than once every three months this year?"

The problem:

You see, I really am not that terrible person. (I couldn't help the desperate plea for pity) The thing is... I have a one track mind, and lately I'm stuck on work. My afternoons, evenings and weekends are spent planning, grading, and calling parents. I must be doing something wrong. There is nothing wrong with being dedicated, and there is nothing wrong with putting in some extra hours. But there are good, effective teachers out there who do my job, raise children and still have a life outside of school. I MUST be doing something wrong.

My hypothesis is that I allow myself to become totally engrossed in work. I allow myself to over plan, to try too hard, to work myself into the ground. I allow myself to ignore valuable short cuts. I allow myself to ignore things that should be of a higher priority when I don't need to, when I shouldn't.

The solution:

I don't think I'll be successful if I try to schedule X number of hours at the gym each week. I'll fail if I schedule a day of the week when I catch up with friends and family. I'll disappoint if I try to force myself to make dinner at home and clean the house every Tuesday and Thursday.

I may succeed however, if (drum roll....) I resolve to blog. Writing it down, it sounds a little off. I know. But it really makes sense to me. It is something I'll enjoy. It is something that'll force to me to start paying attention to my life outside of work again. Frankly, ANYTHING that gives me the opportunity to get my mind off of work is going to help. This doesn't seem like too large a commitment.

So, as I drank my champagne this year, this is what I drank to, to a year in which I blog. I'll call it better living through blogging. Who knows? Maybe next year I can go back to not making resolutions and simply drink to a me who has kept in touch, who has done my part outside of school, to a me who doesn't slouch!