Maddie - Not a Laser Cat

“There is nothing like returning to a place that reminds unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” - Nelson Mandela

I had a good weekend, but the most interesting development was that my cat Maddie moved back in with me. I got Maddie as a baby kitten; she was meowing outside of my front door and I took her in. Having two cats already, my good friend Christina adopted her and raised her from a kitten to a small cat (the best time to have a pet if you ask me.) Due to landlord issues and whatnot she had to deal with, Maddie moved back in with me this weekend. I hadn't seen Maddie since I dropped her off and she seemed so huge now, yet is still small compared to my cats. I will probably give her to my older sister, but I would be lying if I didn't say I didn't consider keeping her and passing my cat Mia on to someone.

(Maddie enjoys laying on my laptop.)

I have had Mia since she was about 8 weeks old and since she is a rescue cat, she is very skittish and untrusting of people. I always viewed her as a loved pet, but also as an obligation. I vowed to take care of her, and I always have. I have tried to break her down with my love, and even though the gains are impressive, she is not very personable and won't let strangers touch her. She is well taken care of and eats too much. My first cat Koki, 6 years later, still can't stand being around her. So, am I wrong to want to trade her in? The inconvenient answer is yes. I can't imagine anyone else taking better care of Mia than me, so it would be unfair to give her up. It sucks because Maddie is such a fun kitten, more along the lines of Koki when she was younger. I keep thinking about this and even as I read what I write, there is no way to swap cats without feeling terrible about myself. And if you know me, I'd rather pick unhappiness over being unloyal or breaking my word. The whole issue is moot because I don't have anyone I could give Mia to and just thinking about it makes me feel guilty. You know, like when you think about how there might not be a God and what that would mean for your world view. Maddie has taken over my bedroom and Koki and Mia and self banished to the den for the time being. I don't have much faith that they will get along in the near future, but my sister will be up for Thanksgiving to take her to her new home.

My older sister Ana and Rick came into town for the UT game this past weekend and my nephew JoMichael came to visit. You would think we would have lots of cool uncle stuff for him to do, but it was cold and instead we hung out and watched movies and football. We did have a BBQ and ran the fireplace. I had a good time visiting and hopefully he did too. I was kind of disappointed that he had quit jr. high football near the end of the season, but I'm sure there were a host of legitimate reasons. He said he will play next year when he goes to high school which made me feel better. My concern of course is the important lesson of learning not to quit. That is what I loved about football, you learned that no matter how tired you are, or how much pain you are in, you keep on going and don't give up. Quiting is addictive and easy and having resolve and determination is something I want to instill in the younger members of my family. Now of course, there is a difference between quiting something you no longer want to do or to free up time for another endeavor, but because you didn't get the results you expected quick enough isn't a good one. Football is always more than about football.


Now I'm thinking about the idea of quitting and my own life. I have probably quit my fair share of things, but I can think of a few select times where not quiting was the wrong choice. Baseball for example. As a kid, I was a terrible baseball player, I couldn't see, was slow and kept getting hit by the ball. Yet, each year, contrary to my Dad's advice, I signed up to play again even though I would get very little play time because I was on a winning team and I liked being on that team. It was a mistake, I should have quit once I knew that I was no longer improving. See the failure was that I never got better, I wasn't sticking to it and working harder and getting better, but just staying about the same level of sucking. So, either work harder or move on I guess. You know, I can probably say that about some of my relationships, I wasn't willing to work harder, nor willing to quit, which meant I was just wasting my time.


Now, you know where I didn't quit? In my dream to become a lawyer. After college, I was told that my grades were not good enough to get into a great law school and I didn't even try to apply once I graduated. But I purposefully picked a legal job so that the only way to move up would be to go to law school. I just worked harder and finally got into the school I wanted. Little did I know that the challenge was just beginning, but in the end I finally got to where I wanted to be. And just like achieving any goal, your first thought is joy and the second is, I should have aimed higher. What higher goal do I want to aim for now?


Monday night, I went out to play laser tag. I was planning to play pool but I decided to give the game a try. I totally forgot how much fun laser tag is. There were two teams, my team which consisted of me and a bunch of middle-age women and the other team consisted of a bunch of small junior high kids. Needless to say we got destroyed, but I got the highest score on my team by at least double. Nobody stayed back to protect our base, so I took that responsibility upon myself. Imagine me and like three little kids all shooting at me and our base target as I try to shoo them away with my awesome laser skills. All I could think about was how cool it would be to have a laser cat at that moment who shoots lasers out of its eyes. It was a lot more physically demanding than I anticipated. One of these days I should devote an entire evening/night to just playing laser tag for hours on end. It is a lot of fun.

Saturday was the boxing fight between Pacquiao and Margarito. I usually cheer for the Mexican, but in this case I cheered for Pacquiao because I don't think cheaters should be rewarded. It was a good fight and nice to see a smaller guy beat up on a bigger guy who, I will admit, fought his heart out, but came up short. I think that it is cool that the only state the fight was legal in was Texas. We have no shame.

I've had occasion to think about feeling of rejection in life. It never feels good and it feels worse when it just reinforces what you were already expecting, meaning that you clearly went in with the wrong mindset. I think about stuff like applying to college, the law school I wanted, jobs applied for, and being picked last for something. But nothing quite burns like romantic rejection. It is part of life and for the most part you learn to take it in stride, but there are times, especially after long relationships that it is harder to cope with. That said, I am aware of how rarely I think about my rejection of others and when I realize that this is how much others are thinking of me, which makes any self-pity feel inconsequential. Sometimes when faced with a string of rejections, you start to think, part of me wants to not give up and keep trying and the other part wants to re-tool and evaluate my approach since something might be wrong. The problem is that the excuse of re-tooling, is just the pretext for giving up and not truly making any real changes. Just talking about the topic is hard because it implies that I'm a person who is rejected. That is the last thing you want to identify with and not a way I look at myself.

I decided to do a google search on the topic and ran into this article on this blog that was pretty insightful and really covered the topic in depth. How Rejection Can Make You More Successful at Everything. What I thought was cool was that it references another article on The Benefits of Rejection, attributing the lack of female entrepreneurship to less experience with sexual rejection and says: “Why are there still so few female entrepreneurs? According to one MIT researcher, the answer is simple: it all comes down to sexual rejection. Chizoba Nnaemeka, of the MIT Entrepreneurship Review, says women aren’t as practised as men at being turned down. As such, she says, they don’t learn some of the skills required to strike out on their own in business, such as “confidence and optimism, sales and marketing, resilience, and trace amounts of desperation.” To pursue romantic relationships, after all, is to risk repeated rejection, much like trying to raise significant amounts of capital to finance a start-up.”

I never would have thought of that. I guess you just get caught up in your own world view. I'm sure there are people that would disagree with those theories, but it is an interesting take. I will say that I think this quote sums it up by a life coach who explains why some people seem able to brush off rejection so easily: “A confident person realizes that rejection is simply a part of the risk of living and that, in order to grow spiritually, we all have to take the occasional risk and step outside of our comfort zone."


The world is how you look at it. It isn't always easy to look at it through rose colored glasses.


Speaking of rejection, Eva Longoria & Tony Parker: The Tattoos They Got For Love (PHOTOS) I don't know how I feel about "love" ring tattoos. Part of it seems romantic since you are getting married forever and in another way it seems totally naive considering your odds of divorce. I guess it depends on where the technology is for removing tattoos.

Finally, this weekend is going to be a fun one. I have a lot of things lined up. I have Louis CK tickets for Friday night and UT football tickets for Saturday. I invited my cousin Rino to come with me since he has never been to a UT game. I want to see John Oliver's stand up on Saturday night, but I already have so much going on. I guess we will see.

next week