My cat likes to drink from the toilet. If we leave the bathroom seat up, or the door open, he will nose his way in, jump up excitedly and go face down-butt up into the bowl for some heavy duty binge drinking. It's not a pretty picture, especially for an animal who often prances around as though being petted is beneath his "dignity." When I used to see the cat with his face and paws buried in the porcelain god, I would harangue away at the children about making sure the "poor animal" had fresh water-look at him, he's so "desperate" he's drinking from the toilet...but he has water, he has food. He simply enjoys commode water it seems...

(Cat, living in my house)

Now, I'm not a cat person. Even though I'm single, not as young as I'd like to be, woefully lacking in a social life, and quite shy I am not-repeat NOT-a cat person. A cat lives in my house. I didn't invite him there, I don't invite him to stay. When he escapes, I don't chase or look for him. I've been known to mutter the word good riddance...often. I often try to give him away in creative ways....but my daughter loves him so he stays.
He is included in this blog simply as a metaphor because as much as I hate to admit it, I've been wondering if maybe, like the cat-I'm happy drinking from the toilet, too. (That, by the way is another metaphor, repeat a metaphor...I drink from my Love Pink water bottle)

(Defense, Rebounds...Hot)

My favorite NBA team is bad, they suck-and I will be very sad if my favorite player leaves them for title contender LA.  My favorite college basketball team will not win the NCAA Tournament this year. My favorite NFL team...has won 2 games this season. I openly support Kanye.I often vote Democrat, in Southwest Missouri. It appears I know less about winning than Charlie Sheen. When it comes to sports, drinking from the toilet is kind of my approach to choosing who I cheer for-meaning I'd rather be loyal to the average than ride the bandwagon of the popular. (Okay, there might also be a really,really hot theme to my favorite NBA player, but really it's his defense, I promise. Defense, Rebounds...Hot)

My favorite poem (and by favorite poem I mean only poem not by Shel Silverstein I have ever understood) is the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. If there is a path less traveled by, I will travel it. As a matter of fact, I will beat it down, thrash through the dense underbrush, scratch my hands on thorns, climb over rocks and cling desperately to a cliff if I have to. Songs and redeeming novels will tell you the hard roads build character and maybe they do, but I don't know if my friends would say I am a person of exceptionally upstanding character. I don't know that I aspire to be a person of unusually high character, quite frankly. It's quite possible I simply aspire to be a person of happiness and personal peace. A person who contributes to society, a person who can pay my bills, take care of my kids and who-at the end of day-is happy and content. A person who remembers to thank God for the gifts in my life and who hopefully is a decent-but probably not exceptional-parent. A person, who, in other words is okay drinking from the toilet. And by drinking from the toilet I mean, I know there is better out there-but maybe what I've got is fine.

(Know the feeling?)

If you follow my blog, it probably doesn't take much deep analysis to figure out that I was not sorry to see 2011 go. It was, in some ways, the worst and the best year of my life. My career ended. A person with a career is not drinking from the toilet. I have spent the last few weeks working almost 40 hour weeks in a minimum wage job, sometimes 10 hour days on my feet, with very few days off. Anyone who has ever worked that kind of schedule and brought home a minimum wage paycheck understands the drinking from the toilet feeling when the paycheck and then the bills come. Yet, as hard as that struggle has been, there is a happiness and satisfaction I feel with my job I never felt with my "career." Why is that? Perhaps that is why I am struggling so much with the idea of continuing to pour money and resources into school and a new career-what if I don't need a "career" if I can figure out how to pay the bills with a job...Maybe I am okay drinking from the toilet.
When I "walked" away from my career, I also walked away from the place I had been for 10 years...and the small town, teacher expectations that went with it. When I found my new job, I found new friends, and a new life that probably seems very "drinking from the toilet" to people who knew me a few years ago. Which is how I came to spend New Year's Eve in a nightclub this year...something I hadn't done in...a while (okay a while is a few weeks- and this was years, possibly enough to write a speech about that could be delivered at a National Battlefield, but anyway)  I was a bit of a deer caught in headlights, well off the well traveled road.  But I was there-because my friends invited me. And that, having a place to go and people to be with, set this New Year's apart from last years and many before that. As I have mentioned before, my freedom from teaching has allowed me to explore the social opportunities (read friends, theoretically dates) that gives my children their freedom from being my social life and best friends.
These past few months, I have come to understand that Mom is a role I have in the world, not a wall I should use to hide from it. Drinking from the toilet doesn't mean settling for less than what I want (sorry, old white plumbers...not, yet) but accepting that it's okay to be a normal, human average Mom-woman who has both kids and a life, and friends...and maybe male friends. I don't know. Baby steps. Maybe baby steps in high heels....

I don't really believe in New Year's Resolutions, they never last. If you don't believe me, go back to your gym the last week in February and look for the two people on the treadmills next to you. But in the new year, I'm planning to be more diligent about putting the cover down on the toilet because...it's a disgusting habit. The cat who lives in my house may be a nasty animal, but I don't have to encourage it. ( I think there's probably another metaphor in there, possibly a sports metaphor; but I will save it for another blog) As for my own drinking, oops, I mean goals...I think it's time I really accepted this person who I am. A person who may very well be okay with an average life and a less than perfect...everything. And focused on the things that are really important-like planning my triumphant return to the nightclub, and those high heels. Perhaps this time I might even try making eye contact or talking to someone. I've wasted too much of my life feeling disappointed about the meantime of "drinking from the toilet" --not just being happy with what I am and have and looking around and taking in this road less traveled. In high heels.