my phone wallpaper-everyone thinks this is me

Hang on to your Perfectionism readers, this post is about to go all Anne Lamott on you and tell the raw badass truth about something that’s on my mind that I gotta deal with. And it’s one of those I’m just gonna say this one time deals.  In fact, I decided to write it just so I have a link to send people who piss me off/offend me/step on my sensitive bits are well meaning as I do think I will be facing more of this little issue as time goes by.

First off, I was inspired by this piece I read this morning.  It really hit home for me. I highly encourage you to take a read.

Please Don’t Envy Me:  The Facebook Status Everyone Should Read.

Blogging is interesting as you put yourself out there, you also invite opinions and feedback.    Often anonymously and from people you likely will never meet.  Then you have to figure out how/if/when to respond to that.  Or not at all.  It’s not for the faint of heart or those without armor which actually kind of describes me.  So we fumble and stumble our way along.  There are no real rules.

I was confused when I shared with a friend that I was just coming up for air from my vacation meltdown in a text last week and she responded “well you’ve done a good job of hiding that on Facebook”.  Like everyone airs their dirty laundry on Facebook!  Hmph!  No one wants to read our shitty days, then we chastise each other for not being real.  Ok, well, maybe Facebook is the land of scrapbooks and rainbows but my blog is my blog and I get to say anything and everything I want.  I think that’s kind of the point, right?  I might start getting more down and dirty on Facebook as well.  You’ve been warned world.

 

I’ve been thinking about a couple of words lately that get a bad rap:  needy and rescue.

I’m going to explore both of these more in depth as time goes by but for today I’m starting with rescue, but not in the way I had intended.

I’ll just say it out loud, proud and again.  I’m getting a puppy.  In fact, I’ll be purchasing a pure bred Cockapoo puppy at about 8-10 weeks of age from a breeder sometime after the first of the year.  A breeder that’s been personally recommended who I’ve done a lot of research on so let’s get that out of the way and done with.

Now I would reconsider this decision if someone would find me a male, pure bred Cockapoo who’s in the color family of buff or apricot or white or cream who comes with a one year health certification and DNA testing on the known parents who is 8-12 weeks old having been raised with it’s mother in a loving known family environment for all those weeks.  I’d adopt that puppy from a shelter in an instant!  I’m on the Cockapoo Rescue mailing list and they’re doing great things–for adult dogs needing rehoming.  I salute them but it’s not my cause, at least at this moment in life.

So many things have been made hard in my life, so many curve balls.  Taking this step with some kind of ease and knowing what I’m getting for lack of a better phrase is something I feel absolutely deserving of.  In fact, I feel smart to do it this way.

how could you resist?

I’m not sending this out to any one person in particular but I am sending it out to a certain mind set.  It’s been annoying interesting to note that once I started talking about getting a puppy, people felt the need to chime in their opinions and at times flat out admonitions, that I should rescue a dog from the pound/street/shelter.  And that I should get a dog, not a puppy and outline the reasons why.

I realize that most of this has to do with their own projections and I’d like to get to a stage in my life where I just breeze past naysayers and opinion givers and do my own thing.  Maybe I’m one step closer in declaring this as the one and only statement I’ll make about it then shut up and go about my bidness.

I was never blessed with having even one baby in my life.  It’s one of my life’s greatest sadness and personal tragedies although I rarely think/write/speak about it because it’s just too heartbreaking.  It’s not that I didn’t want to be a mother or didn’t try.  It just didn’t happen for me and I have a life that’s devoid of the many many experiences that motherhood brings you.  It’s more of a question mark in my life than an understanding and has a profound impact on the woman I am. There, I said it.

And, to complicate things further, I’m one of the most maternal people you could meet.  Go figure.  I should have had a child.  But I didn’t.  It wasn’t in the cards for me.  And there it is.  As simple as I can make it.

The best I can come up with is that somehow I was chosen, by the Powers that Be, to be the last one holding the torch for my entire lineage.  And I do think I’m up for the task and it was a good choice but not without sacrifice.

For me, this idea of having a puppy is awakening all of those maternal feelings in me (as I typed that I just saw a hummingbird jumping from tiny flowers outside on my patio).  It’s giving me a chance to experience that feeling in the only way I can imagine it happening for me.

Now don’t get me wrong–I’ve had cats most of my adult life.  I’ve had kittens even.  My two cats I have right now, Sabine and Coco, came to me as kittens.  Both rescued.  All of them rescued in fact.  I’ve rescued kittens /cats my entire adult life.

This feels different.  Caring for a puppy feels like a completely different relationship.  More demanding yet more rewarding in some way.  I can feel it in my bones.  I feel this thump thump thump inside my heart like a heartbeat calling me to itself.  I don’t know any other way to describe it.

Those of you who have had babies I invite you to ask yourselves:  was waking up in the middle of the night and arranging your life around that infant worth it or was it just one big stress ball in your life and that’s how you remember it?  When you compare it to say, caring for a sick adult, the same kind of demand?  Did it feel like you were getting something back very unique and not received any other way?

I won’t get a baby in this life.  It’s not in the cards for me.

But I will get this puppy.

I have spent the last two months researching and will spend the next two or three setting up my home/life (there’s the hummingbird again) to invite this new precious baby in to my world.  I just bought a book last night on how to raise a  puppy and have another on the way!  I have found a “pet resort” literally walking distance from my home that offers training classes, grooming and boarding if need be.  I’m going to learn every single thing I can about raising this puppy and being the best “Mommy” I can be. I’m taking most of the entire year of 2015 to make this my focus, forego the kind of traveling I’ve been doing and I couldn’t be more excited!  I have the time and resources now and dammit I deserve a relationship that has the unique kind of give and take almost everyone I know with dogs brags about.

It’s kind of weird even for me as I always, always considered myself a cat person.  This came out of the clear blue a couple of years ago when my neighbor Tom was walking his new dog Webster (a Tibetan Spaniel) and Webster ran up to me and jumped on me and I fell instantly in love.  I still feel that way every single time I see Webster and warn Tom he might go missing some day.

Why am I doing all of this justifying?  I don’t know.  I guess I need to get it out of my head and on paper and have a link to just send out when these judgments and projections come flying my way.  Like here is my response to that.  Or maybe this is just my declaration to the world to hopefully stop.

What I want to ask is this:

If someone told you they were thinking of having a baby, would your response be “think of all the needy children who need homes in this world! How selfish to want your own baby!”.

If someone told you they were building a new home, could you imagine a response “but there are so many fixer uppers out there, why would you consider something new?”.

Is there something about my life that would invite “Kathy would just be so much more awesome if she did just a little more rescuing.”?

And please don’t insult me by telling me “a puppy isn’t a baby” because I might just tell you to fuck off.  I’m not stupid.  But this puppy will be my baby and I have everything and more than most any other human being on this planet has, to give it.   I’m ready to open my life and my heart in to this new magical world of being a dog owner.  I’m ready for an intimate relationship like this that I can call my own.  I’m ready to go for walks and hikes and wake up in the morning to this little face greeting me with love. I tingle just thinking about it.

I have a life filled with rescuing.  I’m ready to be rescued.  I feel it coming with this little fur angel, in so many ways, most of which I have no idea what they even are.

I have a dream, a STRONG CLEAR DREAM and I’m following it. Every time I’ve followed a dream like this it’s set me on a new magical pathway.

Please don’t bother me with limited thinking. I’m not telling you how to live your life and unless mine or someone else’s is in danger, I’d prefer you to be the same with me.

I invite all of you reading to consider what dream of your own are you shutting yourself off to because someone told you you shouldn’t/couldn’t do it?

In the meantime, I’ll be over here reading Cesar Milan, obsessing over puppy pics and figuring out where to put in a doggie door.

I mean!