Summer goals

This has been an incredibly difficult summer for me (and an incredibly difficult two years; a post I was advised NOT to write in one block by my former therapist, so I will be resuming writing it in ONE BLOCK as soon as I can!); my time has been spent largely trying to find my new cat (correction … new catS … after two no ways – both FERAL in diguise … and one who just didn’t have the best foster background, we ended up with twin 10-month-old sisters; the Tortie, now Zooey, fell in love with me at the adoption day and since she was “bonded with” her sister, now Magic Sam, we have two!) while caring for my currently ill one, Sparky Puck, who was diagnosed at the end of May with nasal adenocarcinoma. This last week has been crazy hard because at this time last week, we all thought he was a thread away from death … and now he is up and walking and visiting with his new sisters which is wonderful … but going from death to full life and back in such a short amount of time has been … challenging … in every sense of the word.

With all of this, however, I have realized we are in the middle of July and summer, as we know it by our school days, is drawing to a fast close. I hate summer, generally, but I do try to aim to accomplish something every summer, even if that is to finish a book list as we also used to do back in school. This year I have wanted to re-learn and improve on the guitar and start to learn Spanish-style guitar, work on my Japanese, and finish at least one of the books I am writing. I have been fiddling on the guitar since it’s an easy thing to pick up as well as an easy distraction; I have also been freelance writing quite a bit. But as for an actual “goal?” Not so much.

So I have decided that I am going to use my 1.5-2ish months and work on relearning / reteaching myself calculus. God (the not evil one) wish me all the luck in the world, please! But although that is the goal I have picked for myself, I would love to get others involved in this “rally for learning!” for the end of the summer … if we all devoted even an hour to a set activity every day, we could all learn so much and to me, that would be a great topic of conversation for any of us to have! So if you’re interested, please leave me a comment and let me know what you’ve decided to learn / practice / master / &c.! I’d love to hear everyone’s self-challenges!

At any rate, I hope to hear from you all! Little Zooey is chirping at me (the chirps are priceless!!) so I have to give her some loving! I am wishing you all a wonderful, healthy, happy, and fulfilling day, wherever you are in the world!

❤ Beth

P.S. I am back up in hardcore GOFUNDME mode now that SP has made a near full near-death recovery! You can read some of his story on that site, but in short, he became sick in September right after his brother, Dante, died. It has been 3 surgeries, several emergency trips, and countless vet visits totaling about $12,000 to find out that he has this cancer, so I am really trying to fundraise for him to get at least palliative cancer treatments (just the pre-treatment testing costs about $2,000) so he can have as much time with us as possible, which is the least of what he deserves. This cat has come back from the brink of death so many times … I have honestly never even met a person, myself included, who was so intent on living because of love. But that’s my boy!! The link to his fundraiser is https://gofund.me/964bd6db and we could very much use the help, especially as I am working on finishing my education as well as working from home full-time! Thank you again!