Bon voyage, best feline friend. Bon voyage, the Guster.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

This weekend we said goodbye to the Guster.

I first met Gus at a play structure in an apartment complex in Pleasanton, California, in June 2000. My friend James had adopted him.

He could fit in the palm of my hand. He must have been a month old. He was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

He lived with James through the summer but in Fall he and James moved in with me in Cloyne, the student co-op I was living in. James soon moved on but the Guster (known back then as Garfield), was my best friend to stay.

That moment when I met him — when I held him in the palm of my hand — I was 18. It was 17 and a half years ago. Continue Reading

The Many Changes of Parenthood: In Graphs

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Whoever said…

The more things change the more they stay the same.

…has definitely NEVER had a baby. Quinn turns six months old tomorrow. I can’t believe how little time has passed; it feels like an eternity. There have been some marked changes in my life since he joined us. I felt like these would be best represented in graphs:

use of concealer Continue Reading

Six Years of Self-Employment

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Today is the sixth anniversary of the day I left my full-time job.

I was 27. I had decided to leave my job one month earlier. I was then acting Development Director — the highest position in the fundraising and marketing branch of my small non-profit. I had worked there off and on since I was 19.

My coworkers were my family. I came to work everyday greeted by people I loved and who loved me (I think…). I worked with students with stars in their eyes; learned all about their hopes and dreams. Watching them party and study, party and study. There were good points. There were bad points.

I looked around my office that fateful day, and I realized… “I’m too comfortable.” Continue Reading

We Got a Kitten and We Can’t Agree on What to Name It

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Ever since Will and I departed with our awesome roommate Ellen and her cat, Shawn, we have had a cat-sized hole in our hearts.

Gus and Shawn

With a memory like this, it’s lucky we didn’t bleed to death!

We went back and forth about what to fill that hole with. We tried television, and it worked pretty well when we had Downton Abbey to watch obsessively. But we caught up and then that hole kept aching and screaming, “KITTEN!!”

Shut up, hole, we said for weeks. “SHUT UP!”

Until one day last week, it was just plain time.

I surfed Craigslist. It didn’t take me long before I’d located THE kitten for us, Kendale: Continue Reading

Stuff On My Cat

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

The boyfriend is always piling stuff on poor Guster and then demanding that I take a photo.  What good are those photos if not for sharing with you?

Gus always turns to cough drops and lotion when he's feeling under the weather.

I took up wood carving earlier this year...the main thing that accomplished was piling wood shavings all over everything. Including the Gus-man.

We've all had to pitch in with the move. Here's the Guster doing his part to get the curtains in our bedroom up.

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One Reader’s Crazy Roommates

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Thanks to friend of the blog Charlee for sending in some crazy roommate stories.  Today’s lesson, as she so eloquently stated, “Humans are a bunch of WEIRDOS!”

Fight #1

“I told a bossy college roommate that I could find the common room on my own for a meeting (she wanted me to miss the last 2 minutes of Sex & the City?! just to have her way.) and then she stopped all communication with me. This resulted in two months of absolute silence.”

Fight #2

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