I’ve decided that I want to take pictures of these little guys every day to document their growth. So be forewarned that this may become The Blog That Posts Nothing But Cute Kitty Photos.

It just amazes me that I get to see them from day one. I get to mold them into the type of cat they’ll be as they get older. I’ve already started handling them and cuddling them to get them used to my smell (Mama Phoenix seems to be ok with it), because I want them to be comfortable with me. I can’t wait until they open their eyes. I can’t wait to start seeing their personalities.

Videos will ensue soon. Be excited.

The kittens have arrived!!!

After what seems like forever, this morning was the special day. For the past week, every night when I got home from work I would throw my bag down, run upstairs and open the door to the library and look for babies. No such luck. Just a big, fat, tired mama laying in the middle of the floor looking at me expectantly. Every morning when my husband would wake me up, I would say – before fully even opening my eyes – “Go check on mama!” I would hear him walk down the hallway, open the door and say “…Nope, she’s still fat.”

But today. Today was different. And I knew it would be. I had a feeling.

This morning I woke up and did my morning routine of demanding my husband to check on the cat. I heard him open the door, pause and then say “…I don’t see her…” That’s all it took for me to jump out of bed – stark naked – and rush past him into the library. We looked around… Where was she?!?! Then I bent down and looked in the oversized carrier I had set up with sheets and blankets in it for her when she decided to let those babies out of her belly.

And there she was… With six babies!

“WE HAVE KITTENS!” I yelled. She got excited and came walking out, the last kitten still dangling from her lady parts, not even fully out of her yet.

I grabbed my cell phone and started snapping photos, even though they were mostly too dark to see anything. I immediately dialed my mom. It was only 5:20am. After a few rings, she picked up very sleepily – I had obviously woken her up. “WE HAVE KITTENS!” (I think I have overused this saying plenty today, honestly.)

It was about five minutes later, upon taking a closer look, that I noticed one of the babies wasn’t moving. I poked at it… Still nothing. I picked it up… and it was stiff. The poor thing was still-born. I held him in my hands and looked at his little baby face and wanted to cry. I know we saved the lives of five potentially-healthy kittens, but my heart felt heavy with the loss of this little furry life.

We buried him tonight in a shoe box under our baby weeping cherry tree. It seemed fitting. We marked it with a big stone to remember where he will stay. Poor little baby.

This little guy (I keep calling them all “guys” even though I have yet to identify what they are) kept finding his way out of the carrier, away from mama and kept getting lost. He was meowing and screeching away every time I picked him up to put him back inside. He’s going to be a wild one, I fear.

A midst the excitement of being a new kitty-mommy, I also was informed that my grandfather – who has been suffering from lung cancer that has returned to him at least three times over the past five years, and shall be 90 next month – was admitted to the hospital with blood clots in his lungs, and the lung cancer growing again. As much as it pains me, I almost want him to go. I want him to be at peace. He’s been fighting so much and is suffering so greatly lately. I just want him to be happy again. I want him to go see his son and daughter, who he’s lost to the same damning disease.

So… today has been filled with ups and downs – almost to the extreme – but I am thankful for being able to have the happy along with the sad. It makes life worth living.

Today marks my first full day of being Twitter-free. After last night’s dramatics (posted vaguely about in my Livejournal), I had told Simon that I would spend a week away from the social networking site. It had become my go-to time-passer, and frankly, I had become a bit obsessive with it. The drama of last night just pushed that knowledge in my face, and it certainly isn’t worth risking my marriage.

And so, I haven’t posted a tweet in 24 hours. Is it sad that I’ve actually timed it? 24 hours down, only 168 more to go.

Honestly, I’m not really missing it as much as I thought I would. I won’t lie, there were numerous times today where something happened, or a thought came to me that I immediately followed with “where’s my phone, I need to tweet that…” and then realized that I couldn’t.  But after talking with a few of my co-workers today (none of which are into Twitter or understand the hype), I realized that maybe this break will be a good thing.

I had come to the realization that my blogging dramatically deteriorated after my love affair with tweeting began. I attribute it to the fact that instead of ending the day with a blog post describing things that went through my mind, I was live-streaming them via Twitter. I found myself telling people things and their response was “I know, I read it on Twitter.” That should be some kind of warning sign, shouldn’t it? Kind of like the signs alcoholics get before the intervention?

So I figure… maybe my break from Twitter will spark that need to blog again. (Like my life is so interesting that I couldn’t spare you the details, I know.) I want to fill my time with something worthwhile. In the past three years of being on Twitter, I had tweeted over 26,000 times. TWENTY SIX THOUSAND. People, my life is not that interesting, I assure you. All I could think of today were all those hours accumulated over the past three years that were spent checking Twitter and posting tweets that I could have spent doing something interesting. Something creative. Something that helped me grow. Instead of telling you what I had for dinner that night.

And yet… I find myself doing the same thing, only in long-winded form here on my blog. I suppose you just can’t escape the life that is Jessa for very long, can you?

Not that I really have much to ramble about… but that’s ok, right?

Peonies in Bloom

I’m so giddy that my peonies have started to blossom. I’ve been watching them grow for the last few weeks… Every morning when we would open the garage to head to work, I would run outside to our front garden and inspect the progress. I had little faith that they would even come back after the winter we had. I am proud to say that they (along with all of our other lovely plants!) are back and better than ever. I may be a bit biased, since I work in a flower shop, but flowers make me happy. Seeing the growth and beauty in a plant is just really serene to me. It’s my little zen garden.

A Secret Forest

Something else that has gotten me giddy is my growing level of comfort of being able to just stop in random places and snap photos. I remember when I first got my Nikon, and I wanted so badly to take pictures of all these beautiful things, but I felt awkward and shy. I didn’t want people looking at me, or thinking I was weird if I whipped my camera out and started snapping away at random things.

But I’ve realized over the past few weeks that I am having no problem pulling over to the side of the road when I see a house that I want to capture, or a tree that looks so interesting to me… And just capture it. The above picture is the front yard of an abandoned business complex near Simon’s work. I pass it every afternoon when going to pick him up, and as the grass grew long and the trees began to bloom, I just really, really wanted to photograph it. So, one day I had my camera with me and I did just that. I pulled over, NSYNC blaring, windows down… grabbed my camera and crouched in the midst of all the weeds and started snapping.

A few days later I noticed someone had mowed the lawn, and I was so thankful I was brave enough to take the photos when I did. It seems like such a little thing, but it is just growing proof to myself that I really, really love doing this. Being a “photographer” (even though I still don’t completely believe I fit the title) is something that I absolutely love.

It’s a part of me now, and I really adore it.

So, I decided to take a break from the 30 Days of Truth project to share with you my first paid photography gig. Someone I went to school with contacted me on Facebook recently and asked me to do her and her fiance’s engagement photos. So, today I packed up my gear and headed over to Savin Rock in West Haven and did what I love to do most: capture the moment.

Here are some of my favorites from the day… You can check the entire shoot over here. I can’t tell you how excited I am to hear what they think of them. And when they handed me a check for doing something that I would kill to do on an every day basis… It just. Hit me. This is really something people want me to do. This is something I could realistically do for a living – at least part time.

And it made me so, so happy.

Ho hum. This kind of goes right up there with my last post on gay marriage. I feel like these things have been talked about to death, but I suppose I never really touched on my opinions about religion here before… mostly because I don’t like to cause waves, and these topics usually bring out the ugly in people.

When I was younger, I was brought up Christian. My mother took my brother and I to church every Sunday, where I have vivid memories of sitting in itchy clothes on uncomfortable benches, quietly complaining to my mother that I was hungry and bored while listening to the echoing of the sermon going on throughout the building. She had us both in CCD classes every week until I was in fifth grade. At that point she gave us the choice: We could continue to go or not, it was completely up to us.

Needless to say, as kids, we were more than happy to give up the extra learning activities.

I never really followed religion much. I’ve read the children’s versions of the bible. I have a general idea of the whole thing. But to be honest, I think I follow more of a free-spirit than someone in common religion. There was a point in my life where I likened myself more to the Wiccan religion than anything. But now, I don’t really like to categorize myself as anything.

Honestly, because it seems like the moment you put a label on what you believe in, you’re judged – no matter how open minded people claim they are. Atheism, Christianity, Buddhism , Wiccan… It doesn’t really matter what you call it. As soon as you call it something, people look at you a certain way.

And so, I tell you I’m open-minded. I don’t fully deny or accept one religion as being true and right. I’m sure there is some greater power out there. Whether it’s God or something else, I have no idea. I’m not entirely sure if I believe in the traditional idea of Heaven or Hell. I believe that there is such a thing in reincarnation, and I think that something does happen to us once we die. What that is, I couldn’t tell you.

Remind me to let you know when the time comes, ok?

Ok, honestly? I’m skipping this one entirely, because to me there is nothing to say about this. It’s been overdone so much, and to me there isn’t even a reason to go into it. There is nothing to say about it, because you may as well be asking me what my views on marriage are in general. Gay marriage is no different than traditional marriage.

End of story.

I’ve been sitting here all day, coming back to this draft and trying to mentally catalog all the books I’ve read in my life, and what impact they’ve had on me.

Truth is, I’ve read so many freaking books growing up that I can’t even begin to describe one single book that has changed my views. So, I’ll give you a list of the top books that have always been my favorites, and why:

- White Oleander by Janet Fitch – This book was like poetry to me. It was probably one of the first “grown up” books I had read growing up. I was always so infatuated with the Young Adult genre that it was rare that I had strayed to something a little more serious. But this book just enveloped me with its story.

- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – I had wanted to read this book forever, but actually only got around to reading it a year or so ago. I wish I had read it when I was a teenager, because I know it would have made a difference in my life. It was just so… raw. Being able to look into someone’s life, someone who didn’t really have anything extraordinary going on, and really get sucked into how everyone has their crosses to bear. Everyone has their issues to get through. This was an eye-opener to me – even as an adult – to see that even the most ordinary person is going through something.

- Echo by Francesca Lia Block – Anything by F.L.B. in my eyes was moving. Her writing sweeps you up into this world of absolutely beauty and pain and tragedy… And it really made me view things in an entirely different light. Her books are just like magic.

I’m going to go whiny for a bit and talk about my asthma. Because it has become overly apparent to me recently how much I seriously could live without this damn disease.

I was diagnosed with asthma when I was two-years old. There were a lot of close calls when I was little, and many ER visits and overnight stays in the hospital. But as I grew older, it got a little better. I learned to deal with it and know my limitations.

But the downside to “learning to deal” with a deadly disease is the fact that you tend to under-react when things happen. This is what happened last Tuesday.

I had been having a bit of a flare up and had been taking my rescue inhaler a little more than I should have… But I just chalked it up to the cold I was still getting over and the changing of the weather. Tuesday I went to work and realized that I couldn’t do a damn thing without wheezing and feeling short of breath. I left work, went home and went to bed.

I should have gone to the ER that night. But I didn’t. I waited until Wednesday morning when my mother pretty much told me she was taking me to the ER because I could barely speak. From 8am until 4pm I was stuck in the ER while they tried to get air in my lungs.

Annnnd I ended up staying there for four days, hooked up to monitors and stuck with needles pumping meds into my oxygen-deprived body. It was not fun. I had not been hospitalized in about 10 years. I was scolded by every nurse, doctor, specialist and family member for my lack of urgency when I was having trouble breathing.

And so, it was a wake-up call that I need to pay more attention to my symptoms. Thankfully I am getting better, and I’m home now…

But god damnit I hate asthma.

There are many people that I couldn’t possibly live without… My family, my friends, my husband… Or my pets, really. I haven’t tried living without any of them, but I know for a fact that I just couldn’t bear to be without any of them…

But that’s a given, really. I suppose the one thing that I truly can’t live without because I did indeed try to give it up would be web design/blogging.

I got into it when I was in my mid-teens. Back when Geocities and Freeweb were big (remember those?)… I remember being “hosted” at a handful of domains, but really wanted something of my own. For my 18th birthday, my father bought me Gracewithin.org. I was in love. That domain was my home for years and years. I ended up giving it up after my relationship ended with my ex-fiance.

I decided to go “incognito” for a while. Being hosted under my friend’s sites under an alias. After a while I decided that I just wasn’t feeling it anymore and just gave up blogging all together. I tried writing in a paper journal, but for some reason it just wasn’t the same. Even though I didn’t get the feedback I used to get at Gracewithin, I still craved the knowledge that someone was reading. It was encouraging to me, to know that people felt the same way I did, or were going through similar situations.

And so went the cycle of buying a domain, blogging for a bit and then closing it down. My life has gotten far more rich than it used to be, and so I find less and less inspiration and motivation to blog… But for some reason I can’t ever seem to let go entirely. The web design fire inside me has died – and has been replaced with a desire to photograph things instead – but the need to write and share myself with others will always be there.

Which is why Skyspun is still around.