Time to purge or "I wanna be sedated" or Where's Sigmund Freud when I need him?

My brain is so full... I can never get rid of enough craziness running around in it. I can't focus anymore. My brain is full to the absolute brim. I need to purge. I need room to think about good stuff. Important stuff. Necessary stuff. Fixable stuff.

I don't think anyone cares to know or wants to hear all of the JUNK in my head, but it needs to come out.

1. I am so sad about our cat, Pippin. In a nutshell, he's not here anymore. He was being so mean to Caspian and Noira we took him away. We weren't sure what to do. Long story :( How do you choose one cat over the other? My kids, especially the girls, are SAD. I am one of those girls too. I wish we could have all of "our" cats, including Carmel and Oscar. Who, you say? But that would involve some backstory. In the words of Flynn Rider, "Sorry, Blondie. I don't do backstory!" Well, at least not today.

2. I am convinced that my house will magically be "CLEAN" when Beck is approximately 6 years old. Melted popsicles, mud, cereal, legos, paper scraps, bugs, grass, clothes, crayons, pee (yes, pee!), etc. How can you possibly enjoy that? I love HIM, just not his messes. I'm just so tired all the time. See #4.

3. I am completely blown away by the behavior of some "adults" I have witnessed over the past two days. BLOWN AWAY. Wow. Where are your manners? Are manners important? Am I just a hypocrite for complaining about it? Probably.

4. I have been having the most extremely upsetting, vividly realistic dreams and nightmares for the past month or so. My husband thinks it's funny. He thinks I should write them down and use them for a book. Believe me, I could. But I'm not sleeping well and my mind, heart, and body are truly experiencing all of these emotions so I wake up very upset and exhausted. I'm waking up all through the night and when the alarm goes off it takes me a good five minutes to convince myself that none of the nightmares really happened.

Anyone out there ever had recurring intense nightmares before? They're not the same story every night, so I guess I mean recurring in the fact that every night I have a nightmare. Sometimes they aren't about anything even going on in my life -- where are they coming from? But there is a common theme: there is a very stressful, often life-threatening situation and I'm supposed to get out of it or fix it or save people. Every time I fail. Last night I didn't. That was the first time. I woke up very exhausted and freaked out, but happy, because I "saved the day". Hmm... I wonder what I'll dream about tonight?

In no particular order and in no great detail, here's just a sampling of my nightmares: my Dad, my husband, my kids, people in my ward, getting in a car accident with my friend, Kree, doing daycare in a restaurant where the walls rotate, trying to get out of a car that is underwater, trying to get out of my house that is on fire and trying to get someone to believe me and help me call the fire department, people making me have my picture taken with my head and arms locked in one of those wooden things (? I can't think of the name), Kevin Bacon, being in middle school and trying to find a babysitter for my kids, so I can go to class and then fly (really fly) home and get back to cheer-leading practice and make dinner before the football game, trying to fly away from the "bad guys" while holding all four of my kids, my Mom and Zeke being insanely furious with me for not agreeing to watch some kids in our ward in the middle of the night, helping my friend, Ruth, reunite two ghosts living in our apartments that were trying to kill us until we figured out what they wanted (oh my, that was last night, it's still freaking me out), Zeke leaving me, my Dad dying, Zeke leaving me, my Mom dying, Me leaving Zeke, Me dying, Zeke dying, my kids dying, Zeke leaving me, my Mom being mad at me, not being able to find our house, and of course, the classic, being naked in public (I was at the grocery store and every time I would try to cover myself with something it would disappear -- this might seem funny, but people had called the police and were going to take my children away from me) Okay, are you scared yet? Of me, at least, right?!

My nightmares don't make ANY sense, but they are driving me CRAZY. Or? Am I already CRAZY and my brain is just churning and twisting all night long trying to sort through my issues? Really, guys, I think I might be crazy.

5. Do you ever have a terrible suspicion that someone doesn't like you? Someone you like. Someone you REALLY like. Someone that matters. You can just FEEL that everything you do and say is annoying the HECK out of them? And then you suddenly realize it's true and you feel like a total nub? :(

6. I am really stressing about something. I don't want to blog about it yet... I have a really hard time leaving my children. I have extreme GUILT. Guilt about doing something for me, guilt about spending money, guilt about being okay and getting to do stuff, guilt about my sister... I'm sure none of this makes sense to most of you. Sorry. Blah. I'll let you know how it all goes next week. I don't want to put stuff on my blog that is scheduled to happen and you know what a paranoid freak I am. I don't want people to know where I'm at (or not) and when. I hate having choices sometimes. I make dumb choices sometimes. Too often lately.

"uphill and smiling" meets "mother of the wild boys"... and NOIRA

Doctrine and Covenants 122:9 "Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands."

First of all, my checkup went really well. I am SO relieved to have it over with! I won't find out the test results until Friday. Thank you all SO much for your prayers and concern. It really brightened my day to hear all of your words of love and encouragement :) I've decided it's good for people to know so they can pray for me! I know there is great power in prayer and I'm so thankful for everyone that has prayed in my behalf.

Mercifully, my checkup went really fast. (waiting and all) Afterward, I ran over to Wal-Mart for a minute to get myself a prize for being such a good patient. (Yes, I was!) I felt so happy just to be done. I really felt the Spirit comforting me and telling me that everything will be okay. I also felt like my sister, Brenda, was there holding my hand and helping me be brave.

As I was coming into the store and getting a cart, I got a little teary-eyed just thinking of my sister and enjoying the peace of the Spirit. I looked up and saw my friend, Shauntae! I love this woman! We had such a good visit. Thanks, Shauntae, for letting me talk your ear off. You are a great friend. I think I hugged her at least 4 times! It was so fun to see someone I haven't seen for awhile and cheer me up after that nasty checkup. I'm so glad it was her.

I spoiled myself with an almond truffle (no picture, but just think CHOCOLATE), I'm a bad girl!

A new clock for the bathroom (our other one stopped working for good):
A 2011 calendar (I always get a funny cat one. Sorry, Dedra):

And a $20 wreath I've been wanting to buy since before Thanksgiving.
It was on clearance for $5! Yeah, by now, I was positively euphoric:

So I picked up Beck from Jessica's and talked her ear off as well. Thanks for listening to me vent, Jessica. I think you are "da bomb" and I love ya! I got her a truffle too. :)

As soon as I got home, I noticed a small black kitten on our deck. Today was just getting better and better! No, seriously, Zeke and I have talked and we decided two cats are enough. But this kitten was ca-yute! I wasn't going to make a big deal about it and I didn't want the kids to see it, but it looked so hungry. Before the kids got home from school, I just took a small bowl of food to the side of the house for it. That was all! I guess it's all my fault, but on Friday night it kept coming to the door and the kids were going crazy over it.
By Saturday morning, we talked/begged Zeke into letting us feed it on the deck. A few hours later, SHE was in the house! The kids were in heaven (I'm included in "the kids" you know). The funny thing was Caspian and Pippin hissed at her a few times and then they were like, "Okay, whatever!" (It's meant to be, right?) And we were all in the kitchen playing together. We spent most of the morning trying to come up with a name for her:
I wanted to keep tradition and go with the name of a character from a book. Luna (Harry Potter) or Piper (The Lost Hero) or Eilonwy (Chronicles of Prydain)... but the kids weren't going for it. They wanted to name her "Blackberry". So we decided to vote on it. Gabe is taking a French class at school and he told us that "noir" means black in French. So we came up with "Noira" and that was our final pick. This kitty is BLACK!
Here's the kicker, I was trying to be a good Samaritan and I called Animal Control to see if anyone had reported a missing cat. You know, if she belonged to someone, it wouldn't be right for us to keep her. Well, I got a surprise! They told me it is against city ordinance to "harbor a stray". I had no idea that would happen. They gave us until 4pm to find the owners or they would have to confiscate her. I was crushed! We finally talked/begged Zeke into keeping the cat and now we couldn't... isn't it ironic? (don't ya think)

We said a prayer that we could find Noira's owners and we called several people in our neighborhood and went to several houses. But no one claimed her. The officer came to get her and everyone was really SAD. He said we need to give the owners a chance to claim her and if no one does after 4 days we can adopt her. I think that's the right thing to do. Well, no one has claimed her yet, but it now costs $85 to adopt a cat from the Humane Society! We are so torn.

I had a dream last night that we went to the Humane Society and they told us we could have her for free because we were so honest and cooperative with Animal Control. It was a good dream until I looked down at Noira and she was just a plastic toy cat... hmm?