Born: ?????

He was already a grown cat when I got him as a stray with no history.  We couldn’t find any way to tell what age he might be, so I have no idea when he was born.

Became my kitty-buddy: Early 2006

My sister found him in the Wal-Mart parking lot, meowing pitifully.  We strongly suspect he was dumped, because a few months later, he was missing for three weeks, for reasons unknown, and came home; any cat that remembered how to find his new home after three weeks didn’t get hopelessly lost on his own.  One theory was that his owner had died and the heirs didn’t want him, since he seemed to have been well cared for until recently–he was fixed and had what looked like old, well-healed scars from a line of stitches on his jaw.  But we never figured out why anyone would not want such a sweet cat.

While he was missing for three weeks, I got Squirrel and Panther, because I thought by then (2 1/2 weeks in) that he just wasn’t coming back.  As a result, Chilsa and the kittens didn’t take to each other right away, because he thought they were the intruders (he was there months before them) and they thought he was the intruder (they were there days before him).  However, he immediately started standing guard in the window and yowling at other cats to stay away.  He’d never done that before and I had to figure that he felt protective.  A week or so later, they were playing together and he was teaching them how to be cats.

Died: March 3, 2009

He seemed completely normal and healthy all day.  Looking back, he never asked to be let out, so now I wonder if he knew something was coming and wanted to spend all day with his family.

He spent the night before, and much of the morning, curled up by my feet.  He did this most nights.

During the day, he “helped” me with a crochet project, licked my arm, chased the kittens around, curled up on my lap…did all the normal things that were part of his kitty life.  He continued to bounce around for most of the evening, until I heard a thump across the room, looked up, and saw that my big grey cat was laying down funny.

I went over to see if he needed help.  At first he could only move his head, then not even that.  I flicked his tail, petted him, rubbed his ears, trying to get a response.  I talked to him, and he tried to talk back–I heard what sounded like it almost would have been a meow but his mouth wouldn’t quite open.  One moment his eyes were looking at me; the next moment, his eyes were empty.  My kitty-buddy was gone.

At least he had a good last day.  At least he didn’t have time to suffer.  At least…at least…a million at leasts don’t change the fact that it’s so quiet without him to start up a game of chase with the other two.

I will never again come home and find Chilsa waiting either by the door or, if I’m running late, out by my parking.  He did that for the last time on Monday night, when I got home from CAP at about 10, and walked with me, almost tripping me a few times, to the apartment door.

I will never again have to tell him not to bite my arm after licking a few times.  I’d let him bite me a dozen times a day if it meant I’d have him back.

I will never again have to divert him licking away from my nose.  I’d put up with cat breath if it meant I’d have him back.

I will never again almost have to fight with him for the phone while I talk to my boyfriend.  I’m not sure how Chilsa knew, but he would rub up against the phone when Thomas called.  They got along fine, the time they were around each other, but I didn’t think cats used phones.

He loved living here–at the old apartment, he was indoor-only.  Here, I let him go outside, where there are trees to climb and birds to watch.  He would sit on the steps and look at the grass area next to the dumpster, where one of the older ladies in the complex leaves birdseed out; it was his Food Channel.

He’s done shredding carpets, chasing the kittens, sticking his face in catnip-filled scratching pads, and following me to the laundry room.  Exactly what he’s doing now, I don’t know, but there would have to be a serious design flaw in the universe for him not to have a soul, especially given some of the people that, by all accepted standards, do.

If there’s any fairness, it involves playing with kittens or being cuddled by someone.  Maybe with some catnip.

Good-bye, Chilsa.

10 minutes: Try to get the biggest box in through the passenger door

5 minutes: Realize it’s not gonna happen, put the top down, and throw everything in that way.

Really, I wished I’d had the Aries for this one.  But short of that, it’s good to have a convertible.

Today I’m taking refuge at the library, on account of they have air conditioning and wi-fi. My apartment’s air conditioning has been out for a while; I think the office must have forgotten or something. For a while it wasn’t so bad but yesterday got up to 98F (37C) and today is 105F (41C). Also it just hasn’t been cooling off enough at night, so it’s been a while since I’ve gotten actual good sleep; I’m guessing that’s why I’m yawning right now even though I got to bed at a normal time, 11 or 11:30 I think, and woke up around 1:30 PM today (not counting a few random or cat-induced wakeups).

At the leasing office, the lady I talked to said that their maintenance person happened to be on-site today, and I played the medical history of heat exhaustion card (which happens to be true) so I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, but I’m also trying to stay out as long as possible in hopes that there’ll be cold air when I get home. If my apartment gets air conditioning back, then I’ll be able to sleep decently tonight; if it doesn’t, since tonight’s weather is scheduled to get down to 73F (23C), my apartment will probably ventilate down to 85F (29C), also known as “still hot enough to make Avrila sweat instead of sleep decently.” As you all can imagine, I’m not overly fond of this idea.

Probably I should also check out a book to justify my library-located existence.

Just a quick update: I picked up two packages from the leasing office today.  One contained a cheap copy of the standard pilot’s manual (and wow that book is packed), while the other was…drumroll please…my “new” phone.  Same kind as the one I had, but with a little cosmetic damage to the front screen cover (the screen works fine).  If my students even breathe on it…*growl*

I tried a new test generation program. Instead of printing 31 copies of the same test, it made 31 versions of the test with different right letters even in the multiple choice section. I didn’t catch this until I was partway through grading it off of one version of the answer key.

I have to grade this. Which means I have to work out all these problems on all these tests. GAH!!! WILL TAKE FOREVER!!!!! *dies of frustration*

So let’s take a city the size of Phoenix.  And let’s only have three places in the city accepting mail after 6 PM for postmarking today.

If that sounds like a good idea to you, you might work for USPS.

Watch kids take a test.

Yell at seventh graders. Again.

Phone goes missing and gets across campus (I tracked it with Bluetooth from the laptop a bit) but never quite turns up. I find out how to suspend it to keep from having to pay for calls to China.

I get a refund for a book that I bought off Amazon and never got because they used a type of shipping where it was returned instead of forwarded. I provided an updated address before the book shipped, and they said they’d be in touch if it was returned, and they weren’t until I asked for an update because it had been two weeks. I got 39 cents back, they got to keep $3.99 and the book. Now I’m impressed with their customer service.

I get a year older; 24 now. I wasn’t even really used to 23–it was already just a little bit older than I thought I could ever be–so this is going to be interesting to try to keep track of.

In short…woooooooooooooooooooo…

It’s the end of spring break.  I have to stand for hours tomorrow.

I wasn’t even doing anything that should’ve been a problem–I was looking out the window, and turned slightly.  However, the universe, in its hatred of me, knocked my knee to the side, causing my foot to rock to the side, causing my ankle to make a “wait, I don’t bend that way” small popping sound, causing me to hop onto the other foot and swear.

It’s not hurt bad enough to warrant a sick day, particularly since I don’t have any saved up at the moment.  But, I can tell it’s going to be obnoxious.

First of all, the situation was of my fracking up. I have no problem admitting this.

Once in Monmouth, I had money problems and let my Qworst account get past due enough that they did the soft disconnect. Yeah, yeah, bad billpayer. However…once I noticed the problem, they refused to talk to me about why it wasn’t working until I talked to the department that was only open while I was doing the student teaching bit or paid it online, so I went to the WOU library and paid it online, then talked to someone else in an online chat who said that I needed to be at home to troubleshoot it, so I went home, and then they told me they’d get it back on by 4:30. 4:30 passed and I called back to be told that 1) paying online wasn’t sufficient to get it back on and 2) I must be lying about the other 3 people I’d talked to because none of that showed up in my file, so they’d push their slow magic button and I might have to wait another 24. I had stuff to research and I had to do nothing because a communications company couldn’t communicate internally, GAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Today, I found out that I’d re-created the same frackup (I’ll learn eventually, I swear, in mitigating factors I didn’t know how long I was going to have to live off the month’s worth of severance pay). I called it in as either that or wind damage, read numbers off my card, they pushed one magic button for the TV that took like 2 minutes to work, then they sent me to another person to push a magic button for the internet access that took about 1 minute.

So now, I have 7M instead of 256K and a company with better humans and faster magic buttons. Works for me.

The day before yesterday, while I was still hitting the snooze, my phone rang…and the charter school I interviewed at was on the other end, asking me if I could come in that day to sign a contract.  I get two paid planning days before I start teaching on Monday, which is the beginning of a new term there.  Of all the things I never saw coming, they’re putting me to work in the high school–their high school math person is leaving.  I don’t think I’ve got all the facts about why but it sounds like a lot of drama.  Anyway, it’s legal for me to take that spot over because my sub license is K-12.  Apparently a lot of the kids at this school are not so high achieving…not a problem.  I got my start in teaching when I was a kid by teaching a friend who couldn’t read yet.  Plus it’s good to know that they’ll be straight with me about that kind of thing.

I keep getting ideas of things to shoot for, with these kids.  A while ago I came to the realization that college sets ed students up to think they have to save the world right away.  Stand and Deliver and Freedom Writers references were set up in front of us as examples.  The problem is…not everyone can be Jaime Escalante straight out of the box…heck, even Jaime Escalante wasn’t Jaime Escalante when he started.  The Hollywood version left a few things out:

“It took 10 years to bring Escalante’s program to peak success. He didn’t even teach his first calculus course until he had been at Garfield for several years … Escalante says he was so discouraged by his students’ poor preparation that after only two hours in class he called his former employer, the Burroughs Corporation, and asked for his old job back … By showing students moving from fractions to calculus in a single year, it gave the false impression that students can neglect their studies for several years and then be redeemed by a few months of hard work. This Hollywood message had a pernicious effect on teacher training. The lessons of Escalante’s patience and hard work in building his program, especially his attention to the classes that fed into calculus, were largely ignored in the faculty workshops and college education classes that routinely showed Stand and Deliver to their students.”

Start from the bottom, build a foundation first.  Eventually…who knows?