I’ve never liked election years.

When I recall elections of my childhood, I was blissfully ignorant. Sometimes my parents’ guy won, and they seemed happy. Sometimes he didn’t, and they grumbled a bit, but it wasn’t really a big deal. In high school, I even joined the Young Republicans Club as I tried to grasp the beginnings of Having An Opinion Of Politics. That was around the time Ross Perot was running for President, and my mom liked him. I remember plotting with my 10-year-old brother Ryan to somehow sneak into the voting booth with my mom and vote for Bush Senior when she wasn’t looking. Clinton won out in the end, though, and again, it didn’t seem like a big deal. My parents disagreed with news reports sometimes, but they did the same in years with a Republican president, too. It wasn’t Personal like it is today.

It feels like things changed when I came of age. Before the notorious election of 2000, I remember an SNL skit that I can’t seem to locate where White House insiders lamented that both Bush and Gore were so boring and middle-of-the-road, they created a Frankenstein’s monster of Half Bush/Half Gore as the perfect candidate. It was funny.

I was also in the middle of my first political science class in college, so I felt pret-ty informed. The night after the election was our big test. And, of course, that night was the ridiculous voting mishap of 2000, where no one in America actually knew who was to be President when we went to bed that night. Since we were all supposed to stay up late watching, the big test was rescheduled. It was a historical moment, to be sure.

I don’t know if it was that whole ordeal with the recount, the hanging chads, the electoral vote misrepresenting the popular…OR if it was 9/11 one year later and the aftermath there, but it seems to me like something in America broke. People were angrier. Republicans were gun-totin’ rednecks and Democrats were tree-huggin’ hippies. Networks were invented to pander to one side or the other, and viewers of one automatically discounted anything reported by the other. Celebrities started bragging about their affiliation, and people would watch his character in a movie and say, “Wow, what a good actor. Shame he’s a dirty [Conservative/Liberal].” (This statement doesn’t apply to Sean Penn, because no one should like him, and Smug is not a political party.) Being partisan became part of people’s personality, not just something they researched and thought about every couple years, but then otherwise went about their business as a productive member of society.

Or maybe I just grew up and realized the world is mean.

In 2004, I was so depressed about the election and the widening divide between parties, I could barely sleep. Both sides made a few good points but spent more time pointing out the BAD points in their opponent. The Internet was angry. Jon Stewart was angry. Michael Moore was angry and probably hungry. I just wanted to hide under a pillow.

My fury culminated when I saw the movie “I Heart Huckabees,” released right in the midst of all the party wars. I watched The Dinner Scene, which still raises my heart rate to this day, and walked out in the middle of it, demanding my money back. (They didn’t give it to me because it occurred more than 30 minutes into the movie. LAME.)

My anger towards this scene was a microcosm of exactly everything that I felt: namely, it no longer mattered WHAT I believed in — if I were against suburban sprawl or not, if I agreed with the church or not, if I were pro or anti dependence on oil — but that both sides, BOTH SIDES, presented their cases in such a condescending, offensive, and straw-man manner that the opposing viewpoint might be better off being sexually attracted to babies than believe whatever they’re accused of believing. I hated everyone, and I wasn’t even young enough anymore for that to be COOL.

It simmered down slightly after that, but the two distinct pots kept boiling quietly until 2008. In this election, I was cursed with having a facebook account, full of both passionate and educated friends and relatives of both political parties. I believed — and still do — that most political opinions are meant to be kept private. Talk about it with your friends, sure. Talk it over with the fam. But once you stand up on a virtual soapbox and post some political “truth,” I think it’s tacky. You have every right to your opinion, sure, and I have every right to block you. You also have the right to tell me about your sex life, your bathroom habits, that growth on your back, but unless some weirdo is putting a gun to your head and making you FB status it, maybe a little decorum should be observed. Especially when you follow people who maybe don’t believe the same as you. And who maybe don’t want an angry comment thread involving your second-grade teacher and ex-girlfriend to be the place where you spread awareness and maturely discuss differences.

So 2008 was exhausting, too, but I got very good at clicking “Hide news from Joey Joe Joe,” so I survived.

This year, I can feel it boiling up just the same, and I’m just bracing myself like the Stark family. Because I have the same problem I’ve had for, well, I guess 12 years now, which is: I’m a moderate.

There, I’ve said it. When I hang out with my friends in California, I loudly agree with the liberal viewpoints I subscribe to and pretend to see something shiny when I disagree. When I spend time with my family and friends from home, I nod my head vigorously with their Conservative opinions and then pretend I hear someone calling me in another room when I disagree.

This is my curse. I can see the good points in both sides, and that makes people on both sides angry with me.

I am pro choice, but I also believe in capital punishment for the guilty. I love the gays and think they should get married. I disagree that the rich should be disproportionally taxed. I believe in science and dinosaurs and evolution, but I also think God is a pretty cool guy.

There aren’t websites for moderates, though, because by definition, we’re such a mishmash of whatever, we probably couldn’t even agree on coinciding mishmashes. We’re not moderate because we’re in the middle, necessarily. It’s that the opposing viewpoints on each side average OUT to the middle. It’s like being relieved that you don’t have to eat gross vegetarian pizza OR gross meat lovers’ pizza, but still not being able to agree on the million delicious toppings you could share.

There could be moderates out there who are pro life and anti capital punishment, hate science AND hate religion. When I was single, I lamented the fact that not only would I have to find a boy who was cute, nice to me, liked sports AND musical theater, but one that would agree with my ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary political values — none of which aligned with anyone else I’d ever met! Now, it just so happens I FOUND this guy, but that right there was a miracle of both science and religion.

So here we are. A new election year. I don’t know who I’m voting for. But I hope it doesn’t make me hate everyone I know again. Maybe some James K. Meow will gallop up on his Dark Horse with a Pro-Kittens-For-Everyone and Anti-Bad-Guys platform and make the decision easy for me.

On Wednesday night, my brain broke. It was sad.

The Accident happened almost exactly a month ago, right before the Holiday Week at deviantART that was supposed to be happy times, but now was tainted with The Accident in the back of my mind. I came home from a shopping trip late Sunday night and started playing a game with Scamp that I had invented a few days prior, based largely on this adorable gif.

Scamp loved being thrown on the bed almost as much as this kitten, and it wasn’t even across the room; it was just from the end of the bed to the head of the bed.

After one of Tyler’s throws, Scamp spun around, ready to run back to our arms, but instead tucked one of his back legs up. He looked confused, and tried to walk again, but his little leg didn’t want to have any weight on it.

The vet would tell us later that it was an injury bound to come out someday, but I just can’t believe a soft landing on a bed could have triggered it. This is a cat who, for mews and giggles, hops to the top of the refrigerator and back down, sometimes with the help of the counter, but not always.

His limp went away in a few minutes, but he seemed to want to lay around more than usual, so I brought him in to see a vet first thing the next morning. It was a new vet, and he took some x-rays but didn’t see anything wrong. And we couldn’t get Scamp to limp on command, likely because he doesn’t speak English and wanted to be on his best behavior in public so, you know, we wouldn’t leave him there. “No! No limp here! Must be some other cat you’re thinking of!”

The vet decided that he may have just pulled a muscle in his back and said he’d get better in two weeks. He did not.

I brought him to a different vet two weeks later, who I liked right from the start. Scamp still wouldn’t limp, but the vet was able to feel his little knees and found that he had a luxating patella — something more common in dogs. She said to keep him from jumping up on things, but he also might get better in two weeks or so… If not, he might need surgery.

That was two weeks ago. First, I bought a child-safety gate, so he wouldn’t be tempted to go downstairs at all, but he quickly learned that he could jump that — not only defeating its purpose, but also almost causing him to fall down the entire flight of stairs, making it 10 times more dangerous than not having one at all.

Then I bought doggie cage big enough to house large dogs and put Scamp’s food and litter in it. But the moment he was behind bars, he started freaking out, scratching at the cage until his little claws got bloody, howling enough to make the upstairs neighbors stomp around in passive aggression, until he finally decided the secret way out was through his tiny litter box. He hopped in and kicked EVERY GRAIN out of the box, flinging it into his food and water dishes, and adding a nice layer of litter to the carpet.

I put a towel over it so he at least wouldn’t be tortured by SEEING the soft apartment where he used to be able to roam free, and he made it until around 4:00 AM where his howls forced me to free him for the rest of the night.

After another trip to the vet, she suggested keeping Scamp locked in a small bathroom, with boxes on the toilet and sink so he couldn’t hop up. Tyler rigged a webcam, so we’d be able to watch him without going in there. Most days he just slept in his bed after meowing a few times, but other days, he’d pull a towel underneath the door and attempt to scratch his way through solid wood.

The bathroom solution only worked during the work day, too, because when Scamp heard us come home, the howling started. I thought it would be okay in the long run, since he would basically be so happy to be free, he’d just stay curled up asleep on the bed with us. But it soon became clear that he was roaming the house, up and down the stairs, hopping up onto the bed and hopping down, tripping and limping occasionally.

Outwardly, he looked like he was getting better. He would go whole evenings without so much as a limp, and my spirits would soar, but the next day, he’d hop off the couch wrong and limp for a few steps. In the mornings, he knew he was about to be sentenced to bathroom duty, so he’d dive so far under the bed, Tyler would have to lift it up so I could army-crawl in after him. And I’d grasp him by his scruff or around his midsection, and he’d dig his claws into the carpet, probably doing even more harm to his knee as he tried to velcro all four paws to the ground.

On Wednesday night, he was out of the bathroom for 2 hours or so, and he limped 4 or 5 times just from walking on the carpet. We decided to try, for the first time, keeping him in overnight — even though he had just been in all day. The doctor had also recommended giving him half a dose of human Benadryl just to make him sleepy, which I would usually be against, but if it kept him from stressing him out, I thought it might be for the best.

I guess that’s when I broke. Lying upstairs on the couch next to the bathroom, staring at the ceiling, wondering if cats can go insane from solitary confinement, obsessively sitting up to look at the webcam to see if he’s breathing, waking Tyler up to make sure he only gave him half a Benadryl, wanting to go in there, but knowing that would make it worse. I knew I needed to bring him into the vet the next day to have them board him in their facilities, but I couldn’t bear the thought that I would leave him “out” in the apartment one more night, undoing any progress we’d made in keeping him confined.

At around 1:00 AM, I wondered if I maybe shouldn’t have had that Diet Coke at my late dinner, but by 3:00 AM I realized I was having some problem. At 4:00, I wanted to get up and read, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything but worrying about Scamp, and besides, I WAS tired and had work the next day. At 5:00 AM, I wondered if someone could fall asleep and not realize it, because I couldn’t believe I had just laid in one place staring at the ceiling for 5 hours, but it sure felt like it. And at 6:00, I heard (and saw on the webcam) Scamp wake up and start fussing, because 6 is usually when he comes down to our bedroom and hops on the bed for morning pets. A few minutes later, he started howling so long and sad, I had to let him out before he woke the whole complex.

I kept him upstairs and pet him, watching his every move until the vet opened at 7:30. And as soon as I got on the phone with someone, I broke down crying.

Of course, it wasn’t the first Scamp-related crying in recent weeks. I cried when Tyler looked up the side-effects of giving cats Benadryl and said he would start foaming at the mouth. He told me this to warn me, to prevent me from being scared when this known and harmless reaction occurred, so I don’t know why, but I just started crying picturing Scampy foaming and scared, trying to swallow the bubbles, and more coming up.

I cried after the first good day when I thought the limps were gone for good, and then he tripped over a weirdly soft spot on the carpet, and fell onto my shoe. He looked over at me, confused and scared, and I just burst into tears.

Then on the phone, asking all about what it was like to board cats, trying to make sure he’d be in the best hands possible.

When I brought him in, I met with the head of the hospital, and choked back tears when I asked if I could come visit him on weekends. Later, the vet tech came to take Scamp away, and I asked him about the sign I had seen earlier — no workers stay overnight. I asked how late they stayed, and I really thought I could get through my sentence asking if they would pet him before they left, but I couldn’t make it before the water works started.

I cried in my car in the parking lot, imagining him scared, wondering why I had brought him there, wondering how long it would be, meowing alone at night with no one going to comfort him. I spent the rest of the day staring at the wall in my apartment, bursting into tears every few minutes because I thought I heard him mew or snort, which he is known for.

I had to write the embarrassing “I can’t come into work because my cat is sick and I haven’t slept and I can’t stop crying and that’ll probably be weird if a client walks in” email to work. I tried to sleep, but I only slept for about an hour, where I had a dream about my friend Melissa’s cat Ralphie who passed away a few years ago. I woke with a start, thinking I had heard a knock at the door, sleepily and confusedly running through scenarios where something happened with Scamp and my cell didn’t work, so they came to my apartment.

That was my 50-hour day without sleep. I called my mom and cried when I recounted the tale. She sent an animated ecard “from” Scamp, saying he was okay and he hoped to see me on Saturday, and cried then. Tyler came home, and (guess what) I cried when I saw him. I was also concerned that I still wouldn’t be able to sleep for a second night, and I would have a mental breakdown and live on the streets where all cats are my friends.

I should state that I realize that a lot of people have it hard for various reasons. People have pets that have passed, pets that are sick now, people have family members that are suffering or recently passed. I try to put that into perspective and be grateful for all I have. And Scamp might not need surgery, in which case this will just have been an emotional month and a half I can put behind me forever (with no more Flying SuperCat games). Who knows?

Still, the next few weeks are going to be lonely. Coming home without a sleepy cat greeting me at the door. Waking up to a curled up ball next to me. Hopefully it will all be back to normal soon. Hopefully I’ll be strong enough to deal with it if it isn’t.

2012 is the year of reclaiming myself.

I’m reclaiming a weight not seen in 3 or so years — a weight last achieved by being so depressed at leaving my JET friends when I left Japan, I simply didn’t feel like eating. Hopefully such extreme measures won’t be necessary this go around.

I’m reclaiming my bank account, eating in a lot more frequently and traveling less (boo-hoo-hoo). I was actually pretty good last year with eating dinner at home with Tyler, but lunches were a different story. When the sweet, sweet call of “Indian Food run!” or “Hot SUBS at Jersey Mike’s!” escaped the lips of my coworkers, I simply couldn’t contain myself. Besides, everyone around here works so hard, it was practically the only time during the day I got to socialize with them, or so I convinced myself.

So it helped when Heidi proclaimed this “The Year of Health and Wealth,” as we can now eat miserable homemade sandwiches together at our lunch table, killing both birds with one stone.

I’m reclaiming my writing, diving into the foray of high-scale editing for the first time, working on a few different projects at once. This one gets to be fun, but I anticipate it being pretty time-consuming. 100K+ words aren’t going to edit themselves!

The last thing I’m reclaiming has been a bit of a secret, but I’m tired of letting it dictate how I act online.

*deep breath*

I hit the 10 year mark of owning HoneyBeeManor.com last week. In that time, I’ve met some amazing people, a few I still consider my good friends to this day. There were hatas along the way, of course, and you learn to get over it as you grow up, I suppose, but in recent years, there has been one person who made me feel really uncomfortable.

I don’t make a secret of my Twitter name or my deviantART handle, and the YouTubes and formsprings and such aren’t too hard to figure out. While this connects me to many people in a good way, it’s also a little confining when someone you may not necessarily want is following you across these platforms, taking note of your every move and commenting on it — right then or referencing it later.

I tried to put a stop to it years ago, after an inappropriate private comment pushed me over the edge, but one does not simply ask nicely to be left alone on the interwebs.

Don’t get me wrong. I realize this is the price you pay for a public-facing blog, but oftentimes when I would sit down to compose an entry, all I could think of was this one person reading it, letting them into my life, the raw emotions I was feeling, and the wind would just drain out of my sails. That’s right. Wind drains.

I hesitated even to write THIS blog, to dignify this person’s effect on my psyche with a whole entry, but I’m tired of holding myself back. I figured if The People knew — my bee people, my HoneyBees — then I would feel like all my cards were on the table, and I would have no excuse not to blog anymore.

Just like awkwardly announcing that you’re losing weight or writing a 100,000 word novel… by doing so, you’re making everyone your watchdog. Because if they ask you later how much weight you’ve lost or how your novel’s coming, and you don’t have a good answer, well, then you look foolish.

So, Dear Internet,

I didn’t blog for a while because I was scared. I’m not scared anymore. So expect more blogs, please. More blogs, more sass, more mace in your face, and more karate chops. (Seriously on those last two. People should stay at a distance when they meet me in the future.)

HoneyBees AWAY!