Sorely Tested

The last six weeks I've been very involved with taking a real estate class. Am I thinking of becoming a realtor? Nope, not really. I might see about a part time job as a brokers assistant or in property management when I'm done. That's assuming I actually pass the test.

One of the possibilities is buying a property management franchise and running it as the broker/owner. Like I said, all of this hinges on me passing the course final and the state licensing tests.

What gives? One of my New Year's resolutions was to take advantage of all the free educational opportunities there are in our community, even if I have no intention of using the education towards a career. I'm also signed up for the next Master Gardener classes and I'm going to audit some Spanish classes at the local community college. I'm not after a degree, I'm just after a better, more educated, me. For me.

Here we go, the mid term test fell on Valentine's Day night. Not that Jim and I are particularly romantic. I usually get Jim a card and chocolates, he does the same for me. This year we added in going out for Chinese food for lunch.

But this particular Valentine's Day had it's own set of challenges beyond my test. Jim worked from home yesterday and he had a cold. You know how it is when a man has a cold? The world stops and IT IS THE WORSE THING EVER!!!!!!!! worse than childbirth, worse than having a fingernail removed, worse than being crushed between two trains. So Jim spent the day moaning and complaining between cursing at his work laptop for being a slow, malfunctioning piece of excrement.

I was most annoyed for a couple of reasons but mostly because of the loud noises that Jim was making. I'm trying my damnedest to reread through all of the chapters in my real estate books and take the practice quizzes and look up how many answers I flubbed and why. That hollering ain't helping because Jim and I had stayed up super late the night before with Jim watching television in the bedroom and me not being able to turn off my thoughts till around 2 am.

So I'm dragging no matter how much Starbucks I've poured into my pathetic, screwed-up, old body. Little sleep = no real smarts and very slow brain. Being distracted left and right.

Doesn't help that kitty Kiki has decided he HAS to be up on the desk to see what I'm doing. He keeps leaping up onto the desk and walking with muddy paws all over the books, leaving smeared paw prints on the pages. I grumble and push him aside, he gets pushier so I pick him up and toss him down to the floor. Lather, rinse, repeat about seven times. Definitely another stressor.

I'm in panic mode, flunking quizzes left and right, wondering how on earth I could have gotten so dumb in my old age, nothing is sticking to the old brain pan, why the frig am I torturing myself like this when Kiki reappears, jumps up on the desk again and launches himself at me, clinging onto my arm with teeth and claws. A kitty death grip, he bites me again and again and digs in sharper with the claws. Every time I wail he switches positions and bites and claws even harder. By the time I manage to get a grip on the nape of his neck and haul his butt away from me I have something like twenty oozing blood holes on my arm, starting on the inside of the arm near my elbow all the way down to my palm and the back of the hand. My right arm looks like I was on the losing end of a contest with a weed wacker and I'm oozing blood like I'm Dracula's pin cushion.

Five minutes later Kiki comes back all innocent acting and wanting to be petted. Crazy cat.

I don't know what to make of it as I've never seen him be aggressive with anyone in the family before and never me, the filler of food bowls and dispenser of petting. Maybe he was picking up on my tension? I don't know.

What I do know is that I passed the test. Not with as high of a score as I would have liked but at least as good as the lawyer and the former county board member.

Plus I know that if I was still in fundamentalist mode I would never have taken any classes more than ladies Bible study, I wouldn't have dared put housework aside to study and I would have been jumping and fetching and clucking over Jim's cold and computer troubles. Instead I did what I needed to do. Freedom from a repressive religion is awesome.