"The waiting is the hardest part..."

A couple weeks ago, I got all 4 of my law school applications in (3 Tier 1 schools and a solid Tier 3 backup). The schools have another 6 to 8 weeks to get back to me. While I have the rest of my daily life to distract me, I hate waiting. Everyone who knows me knows that I am not the most patient person. I mean, I can be patient with people when they need it, but as far as actually waiting on something, I am horrid.
Having received my clearance to graduate a few weeks ago, I am excited knowing that all of the work I have put in over the last 4 years will pay off in May when I receive my Bachelor's degree, but my need to know the next step in my journey is all consuming. People keep asking me "So what law school are you going to?" and I have nothing to tell them, yet. I almost feel like an orphan with my graduation on the horizon and no school yet to transfer to. Though I would be happy to be accepted by any of them, I definitely have a preference among the schools I applied to, and if I get accepted there, I will probably lose my mind from elation. But if that school rejects me, I am prepared for that too, hence the other 3 applications. Depending on my mood on a given day, I either really want to go to my first choice school or I just really want to get accepted to at least one of the schools I applied to so that I don't feel like an orphan anymore.

Lucky's Last Days

A month has passed since the events that I am about to describe. It has taken me this long to be able to discuss them without going into hysterics. We will see if I can make it through typing this without crying.
As many of you know, my cat, Lucky the Monkey Cat, for whom this blog is named, has always been a bit of a problem child. Since he was a kitten, he was always a little different, namely unusually aggressive. But aside from this very odd and unexplainable trait, he was always my special little guy. At the end of the day, he would run up to me and implore me to pick him up when I walked in the house. I would hold him on my shoulder like a baby, and he would purr, drool, dig his claws into my back and chew my hair while I would pet him. At night when I would lay down to sleep, he would crawl onto my tummy and insist that I pet him before curling up in a little ball on the pillow I sleep with under my arm, his back resting against the curve created by my arm and my body while I slept on my side. When I would eventually begin to toss during the night, as I usually did, he would make his way down to the foot of the bed and curl up a safe distance from my feet. When I would first begin to stir in the morning, he would lay on his side and stretch, then wait for me to pet his tummy before getting up to eat his breakfast. Being a cat and largely independent, he kept to himself mostly, but when he wanted my attention, he would let me know. If I was reading, he would come sit on my book. If I was texting, he would perch on my leg and swipe at my phone. If I was on the computer, he would try to walk on the keys or pace around my chair meowing. If I was sitting on the couch with a blanket over me, he always had to come nest on or next to my legs. He would get offended when I would get up.
In recent months, Lucky's aggression had started to become a problem. His outburst went from mildly rude to inexplicably violent. His vet and I started him on a Prozac regimen after he flipped out one night and ripped up both of my legs like a wild animal because another cat had come up to the door. For a few months, the Prozac helped, until he had another identical incident early in January. After another trip to the vet, his vet and I decided to add Xanax to his Prozac and give it a few days to see how it took. The first night went off without incident. The second morning he refused to eat his Xanax-laced tuna, so the second night I was forced to give it to him the old fashioned way: throwing it into the back of his mouth, tipping his head back and massaging his throat until he swallowed. Its the sort of thing I had previously done several times when Lucky was on antibiotics for bladder infections. The act of giving him the pill went off without incident, and I started to get us both ready for bed.
The Xanax seemed to hit him all at once. He was having a hard time jumping onto the bed and he seemed a bit wobbly. I picked him up and put him on the bed after 2 failed attempts. He looked a little confused, but after I stood him up and had him walk across the bed and back he seemed ok. I knew he would probably just need help getting in and out of bed for a bit, but that he would eventually snuggle up and go to bed like always. He started to howl softly, which for him could mean a lot of things, usually frustration. I figured he just wanted off the bed so he could eat or use the litter box, so I got up, picked him up and gently set him on the floor. What happened next still haunts me to this day.
Lucky began to howl louder as I made my way to the other side of the bed, the side with a narrow walkway (the size of my nightstand) between the bed and the wall. I turned around and noticed he was behind me. Before I could say anything, Lucky simultaneously howled like a wild cat and leaped from the floor, latching onto my right arm with all four sets of claws and his fangs. I screamed in pain and flung him off, but to no avail. Trapped between the bed, the nightstand and the wall, with no clothes on, with Lucky between me and the door, Lucky charged again, and again, and again, for a total of at least 4 times. Each time, he went for my upper body, tearing up both arms in several places and both breasts with his fangs and his teeth. On one leap, he missed my neck by mere inches. I grabbed blankets and whatever I could to throw on him long enough for me to get to the door, which I eventually did. I had been screaming for help at the top of my lungs, but my roommate, normally a heavy sleeper who had been up sick all night the previous night, was out cold and couldn't hear me this time. I ran, cut, bleeding and naked, out of my room and shut the door behind me. I walked into the bathroom and got the first glimpse of my injuries in the light. I had only 2 or 3 deep cuts on my left arm, but my right arm had over 20, along with 5 or 6 puncture wounds on the inside of my upper arm just below my armpit. My left nipple had sustained about 6 deep scratches and puncture wounds, while my right breast had 2 sets of puncture wounds (2 from his upper and 2 from his lower jaws) and the space between the 2 sets of wounds had already begun to turn hard, red and warm from infection. I was sobbing and still in shock as a dabbed a wet towel at my wounds to clean up the blood seeping from all over my upper body. I cautiously opened the door to my room to get some clothes. During the attack, my hamper full of clean clothes had fallen over near the door, so I grabbed the first tank top and pair of yoga pants off the top, keeping a vigilant eye on Lucky, who was perched on my nightstand. He was now calm, his body still, his tail not swishing, staring at me with a confused look on his face. This was the look he would always give me when I was upset. It's the "Why are you crying, Mommy?" look. This broke my heart. Still sobbing, I looked over at him and said "How could you do this to me?" before hurriedly exiting the room to go get dressed.
(And here we go, here come the tears again.)
After gingerly putting clothes on over my now aching body, I went and woke up Mike so he could go get me some Bactine and liquid bandages. Still crying, I nudged Mike awake, apologized for waking him and asked him if he could go to the pharmacy for me. The look of horror on his face when he saw me was exactly why I couldn't bare to go to the pharmacy myself. "Oh my God...did he do that to you?" Mike felt like crap that he had slept right through the attack and jumped up and went to the pharmacy, leaving me huddled on our couch and Lucky locked in my room. When he got home, I was still crying. I put Bactine and liquid bandages on my cuts and bites (which I would later find out was the wrong thing to do) while Mike called his Mom. He had originally planned on spending the weekend with her, but now he didn't feel right leaving me in the house alone with Lucky. His Mom asked to speak to me, told me how sorry she was and said I need to think about doing something with Lucky. Having already been through too much for one night, I thanked her and said I would think about it. I slept on the couch that night, and for a few nights after.
We called Lucky's vet the next day to report the incident. Meanwhile, I tried to go about my life as best as I could, the weight of a large decision on my mind. After 24 hours, the bite on my right breast began to swell, darken and harden, so I went to urgent care. The bite had in fact, become infected, and putting the liquid bandages on the wound only sealed in the germs, despite a liberal application of Bactine. I was given a tetanus shot and placed on a regimen of pain killers and two kinds of antibiotics for Cellulitis, which is what they diagnosed me with. I think its just the medical term for infected tissue. A month has now passed and the bite is still a little red, though the swelling and hardness has subsided. I am told it may scar this way.
Lucky's vet took almost 2 days to get back to me. During those 2 days, I kept Lucky in his room, and Mike would go in and top off his food and water. We bought him a new litter box rather than having Mike clean the old one. I was not allowed near him, so Lucky was now off his meds. When the vet eventually got back to me, the news wasn't good. "In my opinion, Lucky is not longer a candidate for medication therapy alone. He will have to be completely declawed, and even then we will still have to medicate him because he will become a biter." I had heard of cat's being "defanged" so that was also an option, but it would have to be done with the full front and back declawing. I told Mike to tell the vet thank you and that I would call him back.
At first, the thought of doing whatever I had to to keep Lucky was the only option I considered. Sure, it would be expensive, but what choice do I have? Then I got to thinking about what I was actually c0ntemplating doing.
I need to stress at this point for those of you who don't know how spoiled Lucky was. Because of his history of not drinking enough water and getting bladder infections, he drank filtered ice water from a Rainforest Cafe souvenier glass on my nightstand that originally had been mine. He at food sold exclusively at vets' offices because of his weight and his propensity to bladder infections. He got canned tuna with his medication and turkey straight from the table on holidays. He took his daytime naps on a chenille blanket on my ottoman and had a faux fur blanket at the foot of my bed to sleep on at night. He had the biggest litter box I could find, which I cleaned daily, and a few treasured toys, one of them a toy fish, the rest of them things of mine he coveted, namely hair ties, garter straps, mylar gift wrap bows, stuff like that. He got to be rude to every other living breathing thing on this Earth with little more punishment than the words "That's not good manners, Lucky!" because he would snuggle with his Mommy at night. He was my baby. I had done everything in my power to give him a wonderful, lovely life.
Removing a cat's claws is tantamount to cutting off their fingers and toes. That is how the procedure is done. The recovery in a 9 year old, overweight cat would be especially hard, and he would spend the rest of his life, or at least during the long period of the surgery wounds closing, using shredded newspaper for cat litter. Defanging him would make him unable to eat anything thicker than baby food for the rest of his life. And even after taking all of these measures to mutilate him "for my safety" I would still have to make him into a vegetable with medication in order to even be around him. Loving him like a child and having spent almost a decade giving him a good life, I couldn't bare to do this to him. After a "mini-intervention" with Mike, Trina and Gregg that Sunday afternoon, I consented to allow Lucky to be put to sleep the following morning. My Dad would come and take him away and Trina and Gregg and Mike would be here to help me and clean up all the traces of Lucky in the condo. Nicki, Leigh, Marita, Jonie, Sherry, Lynn and many others were also at the ready in case I needed to call someone after Trina and Gregg left to go pick up the kids from school. Ending his life was the only humane thing I could think of. I gave him a can of tuna and tried multiple times throughout the night to spend time with him, but I could never manage more than a few minutes at a time before his tail would begin to switch back and forth, the first warning signs of an aggressive incident. I just wanted to be able to hold him, pet him, tell him how much I loved him and say goodbye, but he was just too messed up in his head to let me.
The last morning of his life, I woke up and gave him another can of tuna and tried to pet him for a bit. Mike got up and Trina and Gregg came over. My Dad arrived at the appointed time and I went into the room with Jeff's deluxe pet carrier to pick up Lucky for the last time. At first, he ran and I had to go and get him and quickly close him up. I had started to carry the enormous carrier, but my Dad came into the hallway and got it from me. The side with the door, where you could see into the carrier was facing me as he walked away. I screamed and in a rather undignified display, flung myself atop the carrier before he could reach the door. Lucky was putting his little paws through the bars on the carrier door and I clutched the bars and told him I loved him and that it was gonna be ok. As I crouched next to the carrier, Trina came up next to me and gently grabbed my hands so they could take him away. I had asked Mike to go with Dad, because it would make me feel better to have him there since I couldn't go. As they carried him out the door, I completely lost it. I buried my face in my couch and screamed into the cushion and sobbed shamelessly. It took me the entire time Mike and Dad were gone to lift my head up off the cushion. By now, everyone was upset. Gregg and Trina were on the verge of tears, Mike was trying unsuccessfully to not let me see him cry, and Dad let out a tear or two. Dad went home, Gregg and Mike started to clean up all traces of Lucky from the house and Trina suggested that she and I go out shopping. Since the attack had gotten blood all over my room, my white bed sheets needed to be replaced, so we went and looked at sheets while Gregg and Mike packed up Lucky's stuff, got rid of the cat pinata head and even the remaining cans of tuna in the pantry, and vacuumed up this house so that no wayward flecks of cat sand or strands of cat hair would remind me later of what I had lost. I am lucky to have such good friends.
The days that followed were filled with random bouts of uncontrollable sobbing. My emotional wounds heeled as slowly as my physical ones. With loving care, both the scars on my body and the ones in my heart have subsided to a less noticeable level, but I still occasionally have those moments, when I am out in public with short sleeves on, where some cashier will look at my arms and ask "Do you have a cat?" and all I can do is look down and say "I used to..."
I've made peace with my decision. I know that it was the best thing to do. Sometimes I can even recount the events without getting really upset, but sometimes, like right now, I have to cry. I continue to have the support of those closest to me, and that means a lot to me. You really find out who cares about you when something like this happens. I am truly blessed.

The Law School Application Process

So I got my LSAT score back: 151. Good, certainly better than average, but not great. So now with my 3.4 GPA and my 151 LSAT, the next step in my application process is to get really good letters of recommendation and write an awesome personal statement. I couldn't be happier with the choices I made in people to write the letters, so now my main concern is the personal statement. Certain schools have requirements for what they want you to write so it is good to do one for each school. Right now, I am working on the one for my first choice school. Once that is submitted, I can start working on #2 and #3. All of the schools I selected are Tier 1 Top 100 schools within 32 miles of my home. Though I am crossing my fingers for my first choice school, at this point if any of them take me I will be happy. I just want to go to a good law school. This whole process is fun, but exhausting at the same time. I will be glad when it is done.

The Second Most Important Exam I Will Ever Take

I am told that the Law School Admissions Test is one of the hardest exams in the country. I am told that it is in fact so intense that some people get up and walk out during the break midway through the test and don't come back. I am told that a good enough score will get me into any law school I want. I dream of getting that acceptance letter from a prestigious law school, and that corner office in a big name law firm, with floor to ceiling glass windows and a view of downtown, in a high rise building somewhere in Los Angeles. I remember going to work with my Mother as a small child, wandering the mahogany covered hallways, peering into libraries stacked with law books and conference rooms with long hand-carved wood tables and leather chairs, basking in the silent hum that permeates out of the offices and into the halls while people prep for court, and feeling a sense of great belonging and purpose, as if some unseen force was welcoming me home to a place I couldn't remember. I think of all the work I've done and all I have yet to accomplish and I tell myself that I cannot fail.
The exam itself is Saturday, but my ordeal started last Saturday. I began to familiarize myself with the different portions of the exam, starting with the Logic Games portion. Some of the questions are easy, but some of them are time consuming, which is a problem when you consider that the test is given in 25 question increments and that you only have 35 minutes to do each increment. There are 4 25 question portions and a timed writing exercise. On top of that, they give you an additional 25 question portion called the "experimental" portion, which doesn't even count towards your score. Of course, they don't tell you which portion is the experimental portion because they don't want you to exhale at all during the 4 hour exam.
I am not TOO worried, but the magnitude of this is not lost on me. My performance on this exam translates directly into which school accepts me. The school that I get accepted to translates directly into the caliber of law firm that will hire me. The caliber of law firm that will hire me translates into the kind of work I will be doing for the remainder of my career. There are people who get jobs and prestigious firms straight out of law school who spend the rest of their careers climbing the ladder within that same firm, helping to build up their own skills and reputation as well as enhancing the firm's. I know it's a lofty goal.
I close my eyes and see the Sun glinting off the glass window in my office. A large L-shaped desk sits facing the window, and I sit at it reviewing a deposition. In my lap sits a little girl, wearing the special dress and buckle shoes that she picked out for "Take Your Kids To Work Day," reading a Dr. Seues book with the same purpose and intensity as her mother, stopping only occasionally to study my face as I read and ask when it is time to go out to lunch.
"Soon my Little. I'm on the last page. Then we can go."

Monkey Prozac

So it's no secret my cat is something of a problem child. Many of my friends, especially those who have lived under the same roof as Lucky, have described him as "evil" and "the devil." I have always said "Animals are just like people: some of them are just jerks, but jerks deserve love too."
Three weeks ago, I was relaxing in the living room of our new condo. I had the front door open and the back door open with the screens shut. It was early evening and there was a nice breeze coming through. I was sitting on my "chair and a half" (that's what it said on the tag when I bought it - too big to be a chair, but a smidge too small to be a loveseat - but to everyone who comes over, it's their favorite chair) watching television and Lucky was sitting in front of the screen, looking out onto the street.
Out of nowhere, Lucky begins to howl, loud and very aggressively. Instinctively, I get up from my seat and turn towards the front door to see what all the noise is for. Apparently, another cat had come right up to the screen. When I got up to investigate, I spooked him and he ran away. That was when it all went horribly wrong.
Angry that I had frightened away the intruder without allowing him the chance to show how big and bad he was, Lucky flew into a state of pissed off that I rarely see him in. He turned, as if to attack the intruding cat, and attacked me instead.
Now, I've been scratched by Lucky more times in my life than I can count. My arms are covered in scars from him. I'm sure people who don't know the cat situation think I cut myself. Oh well. I say this only to stress the fact that him scratching me is not a rare and alarming occurrence, but on this particular occasion, he messed me up BADLY.
After I dislodged him from my legs, I counted 13 points between both legs were he had drawn blood. There were claw marks from at least 3 paws on both calves as well as teeth marks above my knee. I apparently screamed because my roommate Mike came running out of his room to investigate.
This has to stop. I have to always be on guard, not to mention that when people come over, most of the time he has to be locked up in my room so he won't try to eat them. There is a very short list of people that he tolerates, much less actually likes. And what happens when I have children someday?
I took Lucky the Monkey Cat to the vet a few days later. The vet wanted to have a look at him and see how he behaved in order to determine if he was a candidate for medication or not.
While in the waiting room to see the vet, Lucky was in his little cardboard PetCo carrier. A dog got too close to me and Lucky wigged. It looked and sounded like a firecracker had gone off in the box. The whole carrier jumped in a loud, sudden jolt and Lucky growled and hissed like a wild animal. I was so embarrassed, but Lucky was just getting started.
We get into the exam room. I have the box open, but Lucky is still inside. I am petting his head and talking to him while he looks in bewilderment at his strange new surroundings. The vet and a vet assistant enter and the vet asks me to let Lucky out to run around the exam room while we talk. I begrudgingly agree.
At first, Lucky does not want out of the box, but the vet gently tips it over and dumps Lucky on the floor. Lucky walks past the vet assistant, who says hello to Lucky and drops down to let Lucky sniff him. Lucky looks up at the vet assistant and hisses as if to say "F*** you." I kinda giggle and try to scold Lucky, but the vet says to leave him be.
As I am talking to the vet about our options, I am watching Lucky out of the corner of my eye. He sniffs his way around the room then settles near my feet. Then the vet tells me he wants to examine Lucky. He tells me he is going to get a towel to wrap around him so he can take a look at his paws and his head.
After some effort and much growling, the vet assistant scoops up Lucky, loosely wrapped in a towel. While the vet assistant leans over Lucky to hold him down, the vet attempts to look in Lucky's mouth and look at his front paws. Lucky is not having it, at all. When the vet attempts to look at Lucky's back legs, he begins to growl and howl and spray, covering the exam table with cat urine and shooting it almost across the room, nearly missing me. At this point, Lucky breaks free. And here is where it all goes wrong.
After calling for backup, it takes the vet and 2 vet assistants no less than 40 minutes to apprehend an agile and highly aggressive Lucky in a 6X8 exam room. My poor scared little Monkey Cat was finally subdued and placed in his carrier, which was then duct taped shut.
Once I got him home, it took me an hour of coaxing and 2 cans of tuna to get him to stop panting. He is so fat and so aggravated I was worried he was going to have some kind of cardiac event.
Two days later, Lucky's Vanilla Flavored Liquid Prozac arrived at the vet. Why it is Vanilla Flavored, instead of something a cat would eat, is beyond me. It being liquid means filling a plunger rig to .05 every night and holding him down and shooting it in his mouth. I have only recently perfected the right positioning and angle. For the first week and a half, every night was a crap shoot. Sometimes I needed another person's help, sometimes I could manage it by myself.
The other night a stray cat came to the door again and though Lucky yowled and postured, he didn't attack me. Nonetheless, he was still sent to his room and got a cup of cold water on his head.
The vet says it will be at least a month before I notice any real changes. I have 2 months worth of the Prozac, so we'll see where he is at before I refill it. I hope it helps.

A Fresh Start

Wednesday I'll be leaving the house that I share with Mike and Jeff and moving back to my hometown of La Verne after being gone for 12 years. I'm getting a 2 bedroom condo on Bixby and I'm really excited about it. For now at least it will just be me, but that will most likely change. The very next day after I move marks the start of the 30 day countdown to my birthday, known to the rest of you as the month of July (my birthday is the 31st).
To celebrate my newly found space and to help countdown to my 30th birthday, I've decided to do 2 things during the 30 days: eat only what I cook and exercise for an hour a day. Then we'll see where I'm at when my birthday comes. Oh yeah, did I mention that it's the "30 Days to 30" countdown? Yep, I'm officially becoming a "30 something" along with a lot of my other friends from school this year.
I've got a Wii Console (in black) and a Wii Fit Plus bundle of my own and money set aside for groceries, so now it's up to me. It will be nice to be able to work out and cook in my own house instead of always being at Trina and Gregg's. It will be nice to have THEM over to MY house for a change to eat and work out.
It's not just getting to cook and work out. I've been wanting to move back to La Verne for a long time. I have this idea in my head that moving back to the town I grew up in is going to somehow be significant for me. To be honest, when I was younger, I used to call La Verne "Mayberry" and complain that "nothing ever happens here" but then when I left at 17 to start living on my own I really missed "Mayberry" and the peace and quiet that comes from "nothing ever happening." Maybe I was just unable to appreciate it at the time.

I used to look like that?

I was at my Mom's work on Friday using the fax machine and visiting for a bit. I don't like to stay too long because a law office is typically a busy place, but being Friday things were a bit more relaxed than normal. I took a minute to look around my Mom's office to see what embarrassing photos of me she had hanging up. I used my cell phone camera to get shots of a few of them to share with you, though they are kinda blurry. Some of you knew me back when these photos were taken. The first shot is my Dad and I at the St. Lucy's Freshman Father Daughter dance, early Fall 1994. I was really into silver back then, and instead of wearing a traditional corsage, I opted instead for a wreath made of white baby roses, silver ribbon and baby's breath.
I'd also like to point out that even though I was not allowed to wear my silver Doc Martens with it because it would have been "inappropriate", I was permitted to leave the house in a thin, satin, spaghetti strapped dress without a size 36C strapless bra on. Since I had finally grown out my perm and my bangs and wanted to start fresh, I also had super short hair here. In fact, at the time, the back of my head was shaved underneath my over-gelled bob haircut, which, ironically enough, meant that I had to keep my hair this length for a while until the shaved part caught up enough for me to grow my hair out. It took about a year and a half for it to get to the length shown next.
The second shot is towards the end of my sophomore year at Bonita, so I'd say Spring of 1996.
By this time, I think I had learned to wear bras with formal dresses, only I didn't care if the straps showed. Much to my dismay, I was a D cup here, so going bra-less was not an option anymore. My hair covered the straps, so it was OK. I convinced my Mom to buy me this dress because I told her I would wear it to Prom, even though I was only a sophomore. I had no intention of going, I just wanted the dress, which was black velvet and went down to my feet and had a slit to just above my knee down one side. This showed off the fishnets and black Doc Martens I wore underneath it. By now my Mom had stopped fighting with me about my clothes and decided to let me wear them as I saw fit, since we had spent so much money on them anyway. This pose, shoulders rolled forward, arms folded over my chest and stomach, and a sullen, jaded stare, was typical of me most of the time back then, whether posing for a photo or just standing around. Body language experts would have all kinds of fun with that photo. Back then, between the mostly black clothes, the ankh necklace I never took off, and the "how come they don't make anything paler?" foundation I wore, I was in the early stages of goth. It got worse over the Summer before I started going to Citrus College. That's when I started buying pants and bikinis made of pleather and go-go boots and dresses made of shiny black vinyl and all sorts of other things that I would never let my 15 or 16 year old wear. When I started working at Hot Topic at 17, it got ridiculous.
These next 2 are from Hawaii, Summer 1996, during a day spent at one of my favorite places: The Kualoa Ranch, about 2 hours by private bus from Waikiki on the island of Oahu.
Yes, that is a cigarette next to the toy gun in my left hand. By then, my parents knew I smoked. I was a high school graduate, so I guess that was OK with them. I think I was trying to look like an outlaw here. The periwinkle shirt kills it though, doesn't it? I had on a black pleather bikini underneath it but my Mom refused to let me take my shirt off for the picture. Funny, considering she let me buy the bikini.
This horse was so old. The only way to get it to move was to keep a switch in it's peripheral vision. My posture in the saddle here is awful (slouched forward as always), but at least I'm holding my reigns correctly. The really sad part about this horse is when I went back to the ranch 8 years later while on my honeymoon, this horse was still there. Thankfully, I didn't get stuck with it that time.
You never realize you're getting older until you see pictures of you when you were younger. I was between 14 and 16 in these photos, and in July I'll be 30. Crazy.