I did laundry today. I pulled the sheets, damp and clean, from the washer and draped them over one shoulder, then rummaged around until I found the bag of pins and went outside. The ground is hot beneath my feet and I have to strain to reach the line but I clip the first pillowcase up and the wind lifts it out before me, twisting the sheets as I try to attach them next to the line and I remember –

I have barely begun elementary school. It is summer – the grass is brittle beneath my bare feet – and I am helping hang the clothes. I cannot reach the line, but I can hand my mother the pins and the clothes, and sometimes when the sun gets to be too much I go between the two lines and let the wind blow the shirts into my face and I take a deep breath of the still-damp sweetness of clean.

Later on, looking through the windows in the breakfast nook, I can see the sheets blowing in the wind, swinging in gentle rhythm. We get a lot of wind in this new neighborhood – breezes which help to cool down the house. The cats watch from window sills, but quickly lose interest.

My mother still tells the story of hanging laundry many years ago. We were living in Texas, or Arkansas – one of those hot, dry states we had brief uneventful lives in during my father’s career in the military. She heard a rustling and looked down to see the armadillo careen through the dead grass and smash head-first into the basket. Proving that the intelligence of armadillos may quite possibly be on par with your average kumquat, the poor creature backed up, and then ran straight into again. It finally figured out that it couldn’t go through the obstacle, and so shambled off in another direction.

The line takes some adjusting. My dad helped me put it up, demonstrating the knot I need to use to tighten it. I try it when he is there and am able to do it; now, alone, it comes more clumsily and the knot looks nothing like the neat turn he created.

I take down the sheets, now wind-dried and smelling of sun. As I gather them into my arms and take a deep breath of the fresh scent, I hear a sound. The wind has blown open the back door and cats are spilling out onto the porch, some cautious, unsure of this unfamiliar outside; others knowing exactly what to do. I dash for the door, shooing them inside, all but one, whom I let roll in the dirt a few moments more before reaching for her. With typical tortoiseshell attitude, she does not let me pick her up, instead stalking toward the door with offended dignity, one step ahead of me.

If Collab – May: If someone close to you was in failing health and only by offering one of your vital organs could they be possibly saved, would you do it? Would you risk your life on the chance that another might survive?

This question is too easy. If one of my family members or a close friend were in desperate need of something that I could provide, of course I would give it. I’ve been donating blood for over ten years now – switching from whole blood to platelets a few years back – and I’ve been on the marrow donor list for probably half that time. It didn’t take a second thought for me to donate blood, and I didn’t hesitate when asked about the marrow. Should I be called as a match, I’d agree without hesitation as well. Why should I bemoan a little discomfort – a few lost hours from one day – if it can save someone else’s life?

The problem is that this question stops at the easy part. Of course you’d donate for someone you loved. Who would say no?

The real question – the hard question – is ‘Can you let it go?’

When I donate blood, I never know who gets it, nor do I want to. The recipients of that blood are nameless and faceless, and I’m perfectly happy to let them remain so. I would be uncomfortable if faced with one of them.

An organ, however, isn’t something you just donate at your local clinic every eight months. An organ goes to someone that you will meet – someone that you probably already know. You are giving up an integral part of yourself so that this other person can live. Will you give it completely, without hesitation, renouncing all ownership? Or will you then expect something in return – that the recipient live a ‘better’ life; that they focus more on their health; that somehow they now have to ‘earn’ your gift.

The best comparison for this question I’m posing is loaning money to a friend. Most of us have loaned money more than once – a few bucks now and then – and it’s no big deal. No big deal, that is, until it’s a lot more than just a few bucks, and you know even before you loan it that it will take that friend a while to pay you back.

It’s easy to start to watch that person’s spending habits once the loan is made. It’s easy to start passing judgment on how they save (or not), as long as that debt exists between you. It’s very difficult to put it aside and remind yourself – again and again if necessary – that once a gift (or a loan) is given, you have no rights to how it is used.

So it would be with the donation of an organ. If my sister needed one of my kidneys and I gave it to her, I would have no rights to demand how she take care of it. I could cheer her on when she remained in good health, but I would have no rights to complain if she didn’t.

It’s a very difficult thing to give a gift completely freely – and I can only imagine that the gift of a vital organ would be even more difficult. Could I do it? I’d like to think so, but it’s my most fervent wish that I’m never actually put to the test.

Our new house, unlike the old one, has no carpets. Everything – floors, stairs – is hard surfaced (either hardwood or vinyl).

While this is visually appealing, and quite lovely on hot days because you can walk around barefoot on the cool floor, it has a few downsides. I’m not counting the fact that I’m still nervous about slipping so when I’m in bare feet I tend to hobble slowly down the stairs like an old lady. That’s not a downside, that’s just funny. No, the downsides I’m talking about are directly related to the relationship between bare floors and cats.

First, let’s discuss hairballs. I suppose I should have left this particular topic til last, but…well…

When one has carpet and cats, one learns a few things very quickly. The first is that if this is a carpet you actually care about, you should never feed a cat anything with red or orange dye in the food. The second is that hairballs on carpet should be left alone. The simple fact of the matter is that they are much easier to peel off the floor when they’re dry, instead of scrubbing them further into the rug by trying to sponge them up when wet. And of course there’s the added benefit of certain types of hairballs which, if left all by themselves, tend to just…er….disappear. You people with multiple cats know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t pretend you don’t. Ahem.

This practice usually works out well, mainly because most hairballs aren’t seen til much later (unless you step in them…and I’ll just leave you with *that* little slimy mental image for a moment). Hairballs on bare floors, however, are a completely different story. As I am learning, if left alone for any length of time, they adhere themselves permanently to the floor, and require a chisel, sander, and a lot of elbow grease to remove.

And while we’re on the topic of cat hair…

Carpet, you see, has this lovely quality of catching everything you drop on it and cleverly hiding it among its fibers. Eventually the floor gets dirty enough that you can no longer ignore it and so you have to vacuum. But the important thing here is that carpet is polite enough to give you a grace period.

Not so with bare floors. Even less so when there is an entire house full of bare floor and seven cats, some of whom can shed their entire weight in fur on a daily basis, given the opportunity. And unlike with carpet, on bare floors all that hair has nowhere to go, so instead of working its way into the carpet, it collects along the baseboards in long wisps of gray. The very act of gathering together into one clump creates a chemical reaction that turns any color cat hair to gray. It doesn’t matter that my worst shedders are orange and white – those lurking dust bunnies composed of cat hair are one color. Grey.

I have pondered – purely in the interest of scientific advancement, of course, and not because I absolutely hate vacuuming – simply leaving the hair-bunnies alone, just to see how big they would get. After all, while Richard is off gadding about in Europe, I’m the only one who would ever see the mess. But then I ponder if it would be a wise experiment to undertake. Cat hair, I’m convinced, is by its very nature magnetic (how else do you describe the spontaneous appearance of cat hair dust bunnies in the corners), so if I let them grow big enough, it is quite possible that eventually they will reach a critical mass and swallow the cats themselves whole. And so I always end up dutifully dragging out the little floor sweeper and sucking the dust bunnies into oblivion, comforting myself with the fact that the world just isn’t ready for this knowledge anyway.

I worry too much or not enough – it’s always one extreme or the other, but lately it’s too much. ‘Nine weekends left to the wedding!’ my mom’s latest email read, and there is this voice when I see things like this that sits inside my head and tells me that something will happen between now and then – something *has* to happen because it can’t possibly keep being this nice, this beautiful; something must go wrong and soon. I am far too lucky for one woman – I know this, really I do. I remind myself often of this when the worry strikes, but it only adds to it because luck is never one-sided.

I don’t know why I’m so hard on myself. Why can’t I just accept what I have without constantly expecting the worst to happen to take it all away from me? What will it take for the practical side of my brain to convince the rest of my head that it’s all right for things to be this good.

I know that part of it is because I’m sitting on the brink of so much. My dreams are coming true all around me – maybe not all of them, but the only ones that ever mattered. My beautiful house is finally done and we are living in it. And somewhere in Ireland is this amazing man who somehow loves me just as much as I love him; who sees beauty in me that I cannot be entirely convinced is there; who treats me better than sometimes I probably deserve to be treated…and here I go again, my worrywart brain refusing to accept that this can all be truly real.

It is going to be fine, and I have every right to be this happy. I can not fret about the unfairness of it all – that I have all that I want and so many do not. I can only embrace and be happy and try not to question.

It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to remind myself of that.

Years ago while in college I joined an email list dedicated to cat lovers. It’s gone through a few iterations since – moving from server to server; changing ownership and even names – but it’s always had only one goal – to provide a forum for people to talk about and share their love for cats. The list fluctuates in membership and make-up, but on average, there are several hundred members who span not only the country, but also the globe. Age ranges from teen to grandparent, and most of us would probably never have met and have nothing else in common with each other except for our cats.

While local members have had impromptu regional gatherings all along, the list owner has planned a yearly gathering at her home for everyone who wants to come. We all fly in, wearing cat shirts, carrying cat books, toys, and other paraphenelia to share, toting pictures of our cats, and prepared for fun. We play games like Cat-go and Cat-centration. We eat chocolate and pizza; chips and dip; homemade breakfasts loaded with sausages and bacon and eggs. We sleep on the floor of her house, crammed into nooks and crannies, staying up til the wee hours of the morning talking and giggling like school children on a sleep-over. And then when it is over we hug our goodbyes and return home, to post cryptic hilarity to the rest of the group who couldn’t come – stories of pewter picture frames mistaken for handcuffs at the airport security gate; pictures of members frozen in cat grooming positions; continued reminders of gatherings from years before, referred to by the outing: the year of the butter cow; the year of the cat store.

And so it was this weekend, as I returned from Des Moines this afternoon after two and a half days of not enough sleep and more than enough fun, laden with treats and toys for the cats, and a few for me as well. After being surrounded by so many people and two adorable puppies and three shy cats to entertain and spoil, it was wonderful to be home with my own cats once again. I dropped my suitcases on the floor and leaned down to pet all of them as they crowded around me like abandoned children, telling me stories of loneliness and neglect until I had appeased them with all the attention they desired.

I’ve been toying with the idea of making a lasagna all week. Not enough motivation though. Cooking requires going to the store first and somehow that’s too much effort. I even pondered making vegetable fajitas since at least I have all the ingredients for those, but that requires too much effort too. Anything that necessitates washing dishes first just isn’t going to happen.

I lounged in front of the television tonight and watched sitcoms I didn’t recognize. This past year or so I’ve only ever watched ER. Tonight proved that I haven’t been missing much. I guess I knew that but every once in a while I like to prove it to myself.

While brushing my teeth, I caught a glimpse of colored lights through the bathroom window. Looking out, I could see – far away through the darkness across the park that stretches behind my house – the carnival midway for the May Fair. The ferris wheel stood tall and motionless. Since the fair doesn’t start til tomorrow, I can only assume they were in the process of setting up and testing.

I opened the window and heard nothing but wind and birds. Tomorrow night the air will be filled with the echo of fair noise. I think I’m glad I’ll be missing it.

I caused trouble in meetings today. First I asked what the change management process was going to be – again. And yet again, I got no response. But hey, I have to keep asking. People know I’ll ask. They expect me to. Heh. Then I asked when design would freeze. The wishy-washy answer didn’t satisfy me, and so I pressed until they admitted there *was* no freeze planned. Then I asked just what it was that I needed to do to escalate the design freeze. Ooh, the looks I got for that one!

Yeah, me bad, but hey, can you blame me? I’m getting thumbs up and high-fives from people in the halls. I’m such a rebel. Here’s where this whole ‘can’t do it without her’ position I hold comes in handy. It’s not like they’re going to get mad and decide to boot me off the project. They know better. Besides, I’m not always a pest. 99% of the time I’m actually quite helpful. It’s just every once in a while I can’t stand it any longer and I have to speak up. I have my favorite soapboxes, see, and I keep clinging to this hope (silly me) that if I holler long and loud enough, someone will eventually listen to me. I’m sure it will work. Honest. One of these days.

I shouldn’t be too hard on them – the poor confused souls. It’s not their fault they don’t know the answers I’m looking for. It’s the fault of the ones who are higher up the food chain who are leaving the rest of us dangling. But still, I get such perverse delight out of making management squirm. Remind me of this when I move into management and someone does it to me, would you? I’m sure I’ll need the wake-up call at some point.

I got home late – a trend that seems likely to be the norm for the next few weeks – and my arrival was even later due to the necessity of stopping at various stores to get critical items. Food for me. Litter for the cats. And while wandering the aisles I found something else I had to bring home.

Six tiny practice golf balls are now careening madly around the living room floor. If I stop typing and listen hard enough I can hear the miniature whiffle balls whacking into furniture, followed closely by the skittering of claws on wood. The little holes in the balls mean that they can be scooped up with a clawed paw and tossed – an added dimension to the normal ‘bat and chase’ theme of most of the rest of their (5,378) toys.

I’m sure by tomorrow morning all six of the balls will have been rolled underneath furniture that will require me to get down on all fours with a yardstick in some torturous position to retrieve them, all the while accompanied by a chorus of plaintive beeps from furry bewhiskered faces. But it’s worth it. Really it is.

The alarm rings and I roll over. It’s time to get up but I do not want to and neither does he. “We could just not go,” he suggests, but I know that if we don’t get up and go to meet these friends, that we will linger too long and not get the rest of the errands done.

We meet friends for brunch. My friends, really – someone I knew from years ago, and coworkers of D (whom I’d only met once before). We eat waffles slathered in syrup and toasted pecans and sip coffee, and talk with enthusiastic voices and laughter. We sit once the food is done, he and I, hand in hand as we talk with the others, wanting this time to linger because when it ends this means more of the day is over and the time we are simultaneously waiting for and dreading is closer. We hug our hellos and goodbyes.

I tell him I need time to myself to do something, so while he busies himself on the computer I drag out paper and crayons and pens and write notes. When my sisters and I were little girls and daddy would fly away on one of his many trips we would make notes for his suitcase – awkward handwriting on construction paper; sometimes glued cutouts, and sometimes just simple scraps of lined notebook paper. I continue the tradition, and then tiptoe into the bedroom to tuck them into his backpack.

I am avoiding crying. I will not cry. I will be calm and happy for him. I will not cry. Not yet. If I tell myself this enough times it will be true.

There is a list of things to buy. Film and batteries for the camera. How many rolls should he bring? Are these the right size? Are you bringing a jacket? Did you pack all your medicine? I stop myself – he is not a child going to camp and I am not his mother. I’m only his fiance – worried and clinging and wanting his reassurance that he has everything and so therefore everything will be fine. It is not that he is going away – he’s done that before. It’s that this time it’s so much further, and I have no way to connect with him. He goes to another continent, halfway around the world, and for the next month I must rely on sporatic email and even less frequent phone calls to know that he is all right.

We drive to the airport, consulting maps to make sure we’re taking the right freeways. I note the traffic in the opposite direction and joke that he’d better appreciate that what I’m willing to go through for him. We flash little smiles at each other and he asks me how I’m doing. Okay, I answer. Just okay. Don’t make me cry when I’m driving. Please don’t make me cry.

I fuss over his tickets after he checks in and bite my tongue to keep from asking a million and one questions. We sit at the gate, his arm around me, and wait for them to announce boarding.

I stand with him in line, but when we are close, I have to leave. I cannot watch him walk through the gate, away from me. I climb the stairs, gulping in great breaths, blinking rapidly. I will not cry. I mustn’t cry.

Above, I rush to the railing, looking over, feeling foolish for how I left, but he is gone. I catch sight of myself in the windows as I hurry down the terminal back toward my car. My eyes are red-rimmed, my face pale.

The traffic we saw on the way to the airport has not cleared, and my car crawls along the highway for nearly an hour before I break free. I turn the radio up loud and drive home. I do not want to go home without him there. I am not ready for that.

I call my parents. Please meet me for dinner. They come, understanding my reluctance to be alone. We talk about trivial things. They make me laugh.

I go home. The message light on the answering machine is blinking. I avoid it, going around the house, opening windows, turning on fans. I imagine everything that that message could be – none of it good. I tell myself not to be an idiot. I play the message. It’s nothing.

I crawl into bed and stay up as late as I can, reading a book until the pages blur in front of me and I can no longer concentrate on the words. The fan is a quiet hum of noise in the otherwise silent room. I turn off the light, and the cats creep slowly onto the bed, settling beside me.

I pull the sheets around me and watch the streetlight outside my window. And then I cry.

One year ago today, we went out with a friend, the three of us, laughing, having fun. We wandered around the fairgrounds and listened to bagpipes. You and she patiently waited for me to stop dithering and buy the stone dragon, and you insisted that if I bought it, I would have to name it.

One year ago today, we started the day with breakfast, chai latte’s and waffles with butter and syrup and whipped cream, all three of us ready for a day of fun. Later, you and she drank Guinness and I had Coke at a Mexican restaurant in town. That afternoon in the parking lot as we headed for ice cream, you and I teasing, you trying to tickle me, she yelled out “Just kiss her.” And I wanted you to but I knew you wouldn’t, that you and I were only ever going to be friends.

One year ago today I was back home and you sent me an Instant Message to see if I wanted to come over and watch a movie, and even though it was late and I was tired, I said what the heck and so I drove over and you put in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” with Danny Kaye, and I noted that I loved Danny Kaye, and we both remembered the last time I had done this, come over to watch a movie – “Drop Dead Fred” which was rather silly.

Fooling around, teasing, laughing, suddenly we were face to face, inches away from each other, and all I could think was to wonder if you would kiss me, and I knew that you wouldn’t and that was okay because we would still be friends and it would be an awkward moment and we would recover from it gracefully, the same as we did the last time it happened.

But I was wrong. Wondefully, marvelously, completely wrong.

One year ago today you kissed me, and I kissed you back.

One year ago today, I fell in love.

Richard leaves in exactly one week, so today we got all the registering out of the way for the wedding. We’d headed out to look at curtains and shades earlier this week and tried to register then, but were thwarted at every turn – one store requires appointments, one store’s registry machine was broken, and the last wasn’t the right ‘home’ version for us to do it at anyway. So on the way home, Richard called up the appointment-requiring one, and we made our plans for today.

We started with the local hardware store. It’s not a place I’d ever have considered, except that years ago when my older sister got married, her now-in-laws suggested it, and by golly, they’ve not only got a registry, but they’ve also got some pretty neat stuff to register for. Besides, where else could we write down different varieties of trees on the list?

The hardware store gives you a little booklet to fill out with numbers, by hand. Target gives you an electronic gun (after you spend ten minutes typing into their little screen) and sends you off to merrily scan UPC codes on anything and everything. They don’t follow you around – you’re all on your own.

Not so the other places. Both Penny’s and Macy’s not only made us fill out lengthy paperwork (by hand), but they took us around and did the scanning for us. The poor woman at Penny’s was having a hard time of it. She kept tripping over things (and boy can I sympathize. Half my life is like that). The woman at Macy’s came from Dublin, Ireland, so she had fun giving Richard tips for his trip while we were going through the setup process.

We peered at more china patterns today than I think I ever want to see again. There are some truly hideous silver patterns out there (a lot of them, actually). We traipsed through displays of crystal expensive enough to make me cringe as I walked past (if anyone would trip and fall and break this stuff, it’d be me, see). And we plowed through linens, towels, appliances, and all manner of other items (heck, even furniture). In the end, though, exhausted and not wanting to see another electronic scanning gun for a very long time, we were finished.

One more hurdle down. Less than three months to go.