RIP, Cricket . . .

When you have a pet for many years, he is no longer "just an animal."  We had Cricket, our black cat, for nine years.  He remained indoors from the time he was twelve-weeks-old.

Originally, I named him Salem after the cat on the television show, "Sabrina--the Teenage Witch," but that name didn't stick for long.  One morning when I was getting him a can of cat food, he became so excited that he made a chirping sound exactly like a cricket.  It caught me by surprise.  I had never heard a cat do that.

"You're no Salem," I told him.  "Your name is Cricket."

Every morning when it was time to be fed, his chirping started again.  And in a few days, he knew his name.  When you called him by name, his ears perked and he came running.

Once he was old enough, we had him declawed since we were keeping him indoors, which has always been something I regretted.  Not that it hurt him, but the other two cats we took in never clawed the furniture.  And Cricket always looked sad when he couldn't actually snag a toy and grasp it like the other two cats.  He'd walk away and sulk.

In 2007, my wife and I had to move to Kentucky because our jobs were outsourced to Honduras due to CAFTA.  As part of the TAA, we were given paid two-year training or two more years in college.  Both my wife and I already had B.S. in biology.  She wanted to get her training as a lab technician, and I was going to complete a second bachelor's in business marketing since my first novel had been released.

In mid-June we made the trip to Shawnee State University to meet Brian Saul and discuss our college goals.  In that meeting Brian told my wife that they had just started a Masters Program in Occupational Therapy and asked if she'd be interested.  But, being accepted into the program meant that she had to start immediately.  The first week of classes had already started.  They gave her a couple hours to contemplate, and after much thought, she accepted and enrolled into the program.

Since her classes started on the following Monday, we made the trip to our house in Alabama and packed the van with as much of our belongings as possible and stored them at my in-laws until we could find a house to rent.  They wouldn't allow an indoor cat in their house, and since he had been declawed, we couldn't set him outside.  So we bought large cat food and water dispensers for Cricket and filled them up. We gave a key to my sister to check on Cricket during the week.

Each week we drove home, loaded our van with boxes, and while there, we spoiled Cricket with attention while packing.  Sadly, the little cat spent his lonely time eating and eating, packing on a couple pounds.  After several more weekly moving trips, we found a house to rent, rented a Ryder truck, and moved Cricket and our belongings to Kentucky.  Cricket rode in a cat carrier in the front seat of the Ryder with me. I'd rub his forehead with my finger from time to time, and he was happy to have the attention.

At the house in Kentucky, Cricket took to home quite well.  But, an empty food bowl stressed him because he was used to it being full all the time. He'd beg and beg until someone fed him, even though he wasn't hungry.  We got another kitten to keep him company and hoped that would prevent him from obsessing about food.  It didn't.  He'd still beg.

In October 2007, I became ill and nearly died.  I had pneumonia and didn't know that I had it.  The first symptom was a severe, sharp pain in my lower back.  Since I work out in the gym a lot, I assumed I had strained my lower back and thought nothing more of it.  A couple days later, my stomach swelled so hard and large, I didn't know what was wrong. After going to the doctor and then to the hospital for a cat scan, they told me that I had pneumonia.

My chest hurt so badly that I couldn't lie down on the bed.  I had to sleep in the recliner in the living room.  When I awakened during the night, Cricket was tucked up under my elbow and sleeping right beside me.  He never left me while I slept or when I was trying to sleep.  He wanted to be near me.

Any time the front door was open, Cricket wanted to lay in front of the glass door and look outside.  Occasionally, he'd make a mad dash outside when someone opened the door.  He tried to hide in the bushes, but we couldn't let him stay outside without claws.

Cricket was stubborn from time to time.  On days we had to leave to go to work, and he wanted to sit and look outside, he'd get mad if we had to move him to shut the door.  He'd stamp his feet and waddle his fifteen pound body across the floor.  It was one of the funniest things one could watch.

Fast forward six years:

For the past month or so, Cricket had acted differently.  Every chance he had, he'd sit at our feet and nuzzle us so we'd pet him.  He wanted attention all the time, and we gave it to him.  Since our son was home from college, Cricket sat on the couch and slept near him.

Twice during the last week, he made a strange squalling noise.  Something he had never done before.  He'd scamper through the house and paw at things like he was mad.  Then, he'd settle down and act normally.  Night before last, at 2 a.m., Cricket made the strangest cries I've ever heard.  I got up immediately.  He sounded distressed and like he was crying for me to check on him.

Cricket was lying in the bathroom floor.  When he noticed me, he stopped crying.  I petted his head to comfort him, and then I picked him up and carried him into the living room.  After I put him down, I sat beside him and rubbed his head and back.  Our other two cats came and sat on both sides of me, watching.  He looked at me while I petted him, and after a few minutes, his eyes became distant.  I knew he was dying and that he was scared and didn't want to be alone.  He had wanted me near him at the end.  I was glad that I was there to offer comfort as he passed away, but I miss him.  The house doesn't seem the same.  The two cats and dog still look for him. I keep looking for him.

RIP, my furry friend.  We miss you.

What is Triumph?

When our favorite sports team wins the championship, we rejoice and sometimes celebrate their triumph.  And although we are enthralled to say that is our favorite team and they’re the champs, we really didn’t do anything that helped them achieve their success.

In reality, personal triumphs are much greater when we succeed in reaching a set goal.

I reached one of those goals.

Today.

While at Berea College in 1992, I met Brad Lewis at the local gym.  We became workout partners and good friends.  Our workouts at the gym were hardcore and leg day became his living nightmare.  Since my legs have always been the weakest place for me to gain size, I developed a regiment to put size on my legs as quickly as possible.  We worked legs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  He cursed me every day.

After the second week of this, he came into the gym on Friday and was ready to work legs hard.  He said, “I was looking in the mirror as I was dressing, and I couldn’t believe it!  My legs have never had such cuts and size before.”

I kept a workout notebook and our goal was to eventually hit squats at 295 lbs.  I know, this isn’t much compared to the heavy power-lifters out there, but for us this would be a set goal we planned to reach.

Each of us had personal things going on that stopped us short of that goal.  His marriage.  My ex-wife, daughter, and college sidetracked us.  Soon after I met the woman that would become my life partner, and I moved back to Alabama.

But that goal haunted me.  I came across that old workout journal and saw the goal scribbled at the top of the leg regiment workout sheet.  Damn.  That was nearly twenty years ago.

Today in the gym, I looked in the mirror positioned behind the squat rack.  I did my warm up set of twenty reps at 135 lbs.  I felt good.  I slapped two more 45 lb. plates on the bar and did the next set.  Adding 50 more lbs., the goal suddenly came to mind as I finished the set and placed the bar on the rack.  Today’s the day, I thought.  I’m not getting younger, and tomorrow has been put off for way too long.

Adding twenty more pounds, I did three reps.  After placing the bar on the rack, I added twenty more.  I did three more reps and realized that I probably could have done that a long time ago.  Why had I resisted?  Perhaps it was the fear of hitting the goal and shooting beyond that?  I don’t know.  But I hit the goal and even went beyond that.

Were there people cheering me on?  No.  Just two other guys in the gym doing their workouts and not paying attention, which was okay with me.  I succeeded.  I surpassed the goal and was satisfied with my triumph.

What’s next?

Washboard abs sounds good.  We’ll see.

Nature Lost

For as long as I remember I have had a strong passion for nature.  When I was about four years old, Dad and Mom took me for a walk through the forest behind our house and my senses leapt to life.

The sweet smell of decaying leaves became stronger the closer we came to the dark swampy area of the woods.  Near the swamp the moss stood over eight inches tall.  The thickness seemed like stepping upon a soft sponge.  I’d take a step, look down, and see where my shoe left its imprint.  Slowly the moss rose back to its height.

The area seemed enchanted, almost like we had stepped into a fantasy world.  Most certainly this was different from anything I had ever seen before.  The leaves on the towering trees were various pastel colors and the branches blocked the brightness of the sun.  For some reason I actually liked that the area wasn’t too bright or dark.

 Our dogs scouted the area ahead of us.  Near a fallen tree the dogs stopped and sniffed the ground.  Then they dug at the ground and rolled over an object that immediately caught my attention.

A turtle.

Dad picked it up.  I begged him to let me have it, but an awful odor permeated from its shell.

“It’s dead,” he said, tossing it away.

Heading deeper into the woods, we came to a wide stream.  None of us had shoes we wanted to muddy, so Dad made us turn back.

A few months later, the owner of the pastures that surrounded the swampy section of the woods bulldozed the trees, dug out a small pond to capture the stream, and fenced the area.  He converted the lushness of the woods into an extension of his pastures.  The place where this beautiful deep moss had grown was erased.  And many years later, it has never recovered.

Sometimes progress should shame us as human beings.

Which Road Will You Take?

We should never blame others for our failed goals.  Not even if they are the ones who planted the seeds of negativity.  They may have put the seeds there, but we are the ones who allowed them to grow.  Excuses are a cop out.  If something failed the first time, pick yourself up, dust off the dirt and mud, and start again.  Keep trying.  Persevere.

Nothing irks me more than seeing others point fingers of blame and allow themselves to be satisfied with their present position in life.  The blame game is easy, if you want to accept failure and be lazy.  Perseverance demands that you keep fighting your way to victory.  You never stop trying.

Cards of life are dealt, but that doesn’t always mean you have to accept the hand before you.  You can trade some of them in for new cards.  We make the choices in our lives.  Sometimes the choice doesn’t end the best way possible.  Sometimes we take a wrong turn and it takes a while to get back on the right path.

I have taken wrong turns in life.  Lots of them.  I dropped out of college in 1986 and seven years passed before I made the decision to go back.  I learned a lot from that experience, but I also learned that my future depended upon what I decided to do next.

I now have a MFA in Creative Writing and teach at a junior college.  But this occurred only because I chose this path.  I could have copped out years ago, and wallowed in self-pity that others were responsible for my failure, but I didn’t.  I discovered whom I wanted to be, aimed for that goal, and only after jumping the hurdles in the race did I finally achieve it.  Was it easy?  No.  Not everything worth pursuing comes easily.

The Nightmare of Reality

Nightmares are not something that I experience too often.  One of the most vivid nightmares I ever had occurred when I was about three years old.  I had the same horrid dream three or four times.  Each time I awakened, I was terrified and afraid to go back to sleep.

Even though I was that young, the dream had a lot of symbolism and had I been keen on this later in life, I might have spared myself a lot of heartache and grief.  Call it a vision or a dreamlike premonition, but this is what I dreamt:

The room was dark and dim.  The walls were covered with light blue wallpaper.  A small cushioned chair rested against the wall.  Beside this chair was a table with a lamp turned on.  The heavy lampshade prevented the light bulb from brightening the room.  Standing in the room was a girl with blonde hair.  She was probably around eleven years old.

The girl held a large flower in her hand and plucked away pedals with the other.  Although she said no words, her action was like, “He loves me, he loves me not . . .”

I don’t know why but the girl frightened me.  Something about her told me to get away.  To run.  I remember being afraid and running as hard as I could to escape from the room, but there wasn’t a door.  I hit the wall and tore at the wallpaper, but I couldn’t get away.  The girl never moved.  She just plucked flower pedals.

I had this nightmare three or four nights in a row.  Always the same feeling.  Get away from her.

The last time I dreamt this, I hit the wall, ripped through the wallpaper, busted out bricks, and escaped.  I never had the dream again.  Off and on over my childhood, I thought about the dream but never made any sense of why it lingered in my mind.  Eventually, I forgot about it.

When I started dating my first wife, I knew that she had been married twice before.  I brought her over to my cousin’s house to meet him and his wife.  My cousin was the pastor of a church.  After he and his wife met her, he called me a few days later.

He said, “Leonard, I don’t think you should marry her.  God has kept me awake all week about this.  I’ve prayed and prayed over the situation.  The same answer keeps coming.  I really don’t think she’s the one.”

I was stunned but “being in love,” I came to her defense.  So, he countered with, “Ask her this.  Ask her about the men in her past, etc.”  So I did.  And she lied about it all without flinching and with a straight face.  But the truth slowly began to unbury itself not long after we married.  Over time, I discovered lots of things that my cousin had warned me about.  The warning given to him should have jarred my memory of the nightmare, but I was too blinded by my emotions for it to register.

Her past wasn’t the real problem.  Her pathological nature to lie about everything under the sun was.  She suffered extreme bipolar disorder and refused to take her medication.  She’d rather lie than tell the truth.  She stole from people.  She cheated on all the men in her life, including me.  She was verbally and physically violent.  Twice she tried to stab me.  Once with a knife and another time with a jagged piece of glass from a picture frame she smashed.

After two years, I finally left the marriage, but I was a shell of the person I had been previously.  My self-esteem was in shambles.  I had allowed my mind to shut down in order to protect myself.  I worked, ate, and slept. It was all I did during the last months of the relationship and it was how I survived, functioning at a bare minimum.

Only one time during that marriage did I come close to remembering the nightmare.  Once at her grandmother’s house I saw a picture of her when she was about eleven or twelve and thought, “That girl looks familiar.  Had I seen her when I was little?”

In my nightmare, yes.  She was the girl in that dream.  Only it was still a few years after the divorce before I put those pieces together.  Eerie but it’s the truth.

Ever wondered why I write dark themed novels?  This is part of the reason.  I say it a lot, but writing has been my therapy.  But since I’ve been writing dark novels, I seldom have a nightmare.  Of course, I’d rather dream an imaginary nightmare than to be living in one.  At least you can leave the one by waking up.  The other takes longer to escape.

Living in the Now

Finding inspiration for success isn’t as hard as one might believe.  Reading autobiographies or biographies about successful people often is a good start.  Whether we like it or not, our lives are role models for others, either good or bad, so our decisions and how we conduct ourselves are judged by those watching us.  And trust me, someone is watching you and your behavior.

When I lost over thirty pounds last year, which only happened because I took self-inventory and realized that I had a problem to address in my life.  Losing the weight became easier once I understood the bad habits I had allowed to sneak into my life.  Self-evaluation was key to seeing a new me.  Once I visualized shedding the pounds and eliminated the bad foods, and dedicated myself to cardio twice a day, the rest came easy.  But I had to make those changes.  Otherwise, I never would have gotten healthier.

That is both mental and physical.  Creating a better self-image is the first step.

Visit the past and learn from it.  Don’t live in the past.  Plan your future and where you plan to be starting today.  You have to live in the now.  Today.  Tomorrow never comes.  Today is the tomorrow you promised yourself yesterday that you’d change.  Right?  Well, it’s here.  Do everything you can to bring a smile to those living around you.  That’s the first step in making the world and our environment a brighter place.

Overcoming Odds

-->

Actually several factors in my early life almost stopped me from being an author.  I wrote my first novel when I was around eleven years old.  My mother and father were students at Northeast State Junior College at the time.  One of their English instructors read part of my novel when they showed it to her.  She really liked it and said that I had the potential to be an author.  I was happy at those remarks and continued working on my book.

Then, during the summer when my brothers and sister came to visit, my father told me to go get the book I was writing.  I brought it into the living room, and he started reading it out loud.  At first I was proud that others were hearing what I had written.  That is, until my father capitalized on any misspelled words and made jokes about them.

One word in particular was ogre, and I had spelled it orge, which my father promptly pronounced, “Orgy.”  He hammered the mistake over and over, making everyone laugh.  Well, after the sixth or seventh time it stopped being funny to everyone listening.  But when you’re eleven, you feel like everyone is laughing at you.  It was humiliating, and for a long time, I stopped writing.  (Remember: Manual typewriters didn’t have spellcheck).

After my mother and father divorced, I started writing again.  Only now, I faced a new obstacle.  The church my sister and I attended taught against fantasy and using our imaginations.  Anything that wasn’t in the Bible was frowned upon.  So I struggled with this and stopped writing.

It wouldn’t be until many years later that a thought hit me.  To believe in God, don’t you have to use your imagination?  To visualize Heaven and Hell, places you’ve never seen . . . doesn’t that require imagination?  But still I lingered and wondered what to do.

In 1993, I met my wife-to-be, Christal.  While at a bookstore, she showed me a collection of Dean Koontz novels and that he was her favorite author.  The huge book was a three-in-one novel collection.  Since she didn’t have the set, I went back to the bookstore later and bought it for her as a surprise.  Little did I know the surprise would be my own.  I took the book back to my dorm room and thought, “I wonder why she likes his books so much.”

I started reading and four chapters later, I was hooked!  Suddenly, the desire to write that I had buried rekindled.  I knew what I truly wanted to do with my life.  This is why the dedication in my first novel reads:  “For my wife, Christal, who reignited my desire to write again.  Without her this book would not have been written.  And you?  You would not be reading this.”

So, if you’re a fan, she’s a big part of why I started writing again.  Without her I doubt I would have rediscovered my creative direction.

As I’ve mentioned several times this week, you have to ignore the negativity and accentuate the positive.  Otherwise, you’ve already failed.  Progress only comes if you push past the obstacles and follow your heart and dreams.  If you never try, you never know what you can achieve.