My phone vibrates off the counter.  I go over and pick it up, looking at the caller id.

“Hey Lauren! Long time no see!”  I say, talking to my friend from ISU; she now lives in Chicago.

“Did you get it?”  Lauren says; our relationship extends beyond the normal greetings.

“Get…what?”  I say slowly looking around my apartment at a joke I must have missed.

“Your diploma!”  She breathes, hardly able to contain her excitement, “I got mine!”

“No, but I haven’t been looking for it,”  I say, thinking of the table downstairs in the apartment complex’s foyer that contains all of the packages that the landlord brings in during the day.   I snatch up my key, put on my sandals and run downstairs.

“It looks gothic, actually,” Lauren starts, going into a lengthy discussion of how it came in a flat package that said ‘Do Not Bend’ on the front.

I run down the stairs and turn the corner, almost sending the coffee table in the apartment complex’s foyer flying, as I cross the room to the table containing the packages.  On top lays a flat manilla envelope, alone on the large table.

Finally, the moment that I have been waiting for.

I remember what someone once told me after I was feeling very annoyed, as I was racking up all of this debt and having so much homework, “In the end, once you get that piece of paper it will all be worth it”.

I pick up the manilla envelope gently, reading the label that says “Do not bend” written in red ink.  The envelope is in pristine condition, hardly any dirt.  I read the label, letting every part of this moment sink in.

“To Mr. Trevor…”

I read the label again.  This package is not for me.   It’s for a Trevor that lives in apartment 101.  Lucky bastard.

“Jillian?”  I hear Lauren’s voice, bringing me to the present.  “Did you get it?”

“Naw,”  I say, laying the manilla envelope down carefully, in it’s original face up position, “When’d you get yours?”

“Over a week ago, for sure,”  Lauren says.  I frown.

I tell Lauren about the guilt I had after getting a C and a D on all of the Business Finance tests, and then scoring an 89 out of 89 on the Final (including the curve).   I actually just finished reading the textbook for that Business Finance class and doing all of the homework problems.  There’s a long silence on the phone.

“You’re serious?”

“All I have to say is that I’d better get this damn diploma,”  I grumble.  Guilt can be harsh at times, and, I’ve been bored.

I tell Lauren that maybe it is because of the address change, but Lauren reminds me that she too changed her address, and her diploma arrived awhile ago.  We hang up shortly afterward, and I’m stricken with images of graduating and ISU ripping the diploma case out of my hands and saying there has been a mistake.

Maybe I forgot to pay for something, that’s been known to happen to other graduates.  Maybe, I think, panic coursing through me, maybe I really didn’t get a proper grade for all of my classes, and I have to retake something…maybeeeee…

I stop, and pick up the phone to call my mother, who is on vacation; this is more important than some silly vacation at Myrtle Beach.

After lengthy hellos where she describes how the trip out there went (they drove), I tell my mother about my fears from ISU, and how Lauren has received her diploma and I have not.

“Well, you got your diploma in the mail…” My mother says, after I finish talking about my fears about not passing my classes, “It was what…I think about a week ago!”

“Ma’!  Come onnnnnn; I’m freaking out over here and all you can say is that you received it in the mail at the house a week ago?”

“Yesssss, well, I am doing something to it as a surprise!”  She exclaims.

“Oh,”  I say.  There are only so many things that one can do with a diploma, and number one is getting it framed

“Thank you,”  I say awkwardly, “How does it look?”

She says that it looks nice and professional.  Her first child to get any sort of college degree, of course she is doing something to it.

All I have to say is, for all of that money I paid to ISU, it had better come mounted on a piece of silver brick with my name in Gold lettering.

Knowing ISU, I’m sure that it is printed out on recycled paper with inkjet ink smeared all over it.

All I have to say is when I finally get my diploma, you can bet it is going to become the centerpiece of my apartment.  In fact, I may get started on a tribute statue soon.

Lately, my cat, Scrappy, has been following me around like an extremely pompous thing.  When I first got her she was prone to hiding under my bed for hours on end, only coming out when she was hungry or needed to use the litterbox.  Now, she is used to the house now (I got her about a month ago, click here for that entry), and she follows me around EVERYWHERE.

Here, this is the look I get every five seconds when I turn around, and have to look down as to not trip over the cat, Scrappy.

No, that’s not a trick of the light, her left eye really is purple - she scratched it when she was itching herself, and now the vet figures she can see, but her eyes will always be that color because she scratched the cornea.  I think that is why I call her, affectionately, “Genius.”

Most of the pictures are of her meowing while in that sitting position, because she loves to meow when she wants attention. Do you have ANY idea how long it took me to figure that out? The first 500 times she looked up at me with this exact same look and meowed it was like this:

MEOW

“What?”

MEOW!

“What??”

MEOW!

“Timmy fell down the well?”

MEOW!

“And he needs my help by bringing a ladder and some rope?”

MEOW!

Then, once I realized that she wanted me to pick her up and give her attention, the meowing stops for a few hours while she goes and contents herself by staring at a wall or whatnot, then comes back for more attention a little while later.

Normally that is the position I get after I get a shower or get up after I sit for awhile on the couch. And sure, it’s cute the first seventy times I turn around to see her sitting/laying there, and most of the time I say with affection:

“ARGHHHHHHHH!” Right before I sprain my ankle trying not to step on her.

Yeah, cute, right before she tries to kill you by taking up the ENTIRE FLOOR SPACE with her body.

Lately she has also been amusing herself by staring at walls. It must be hard to be a cat. All of that wall to stare at and not enough time in the day. Of course, as SOON as I make any sort of sound, her head turns so fast I’m afraid it’s going to crack right off.

This time, I made a soft clucking noise to get her to turn and then I snapped this picture. Pretty much how she always looks, especially when she is lying on the stairs and she hears me moving around, I see her head pop up between the railing boards as if to say “DID SHE MOVE?! Pet me now??”

And finally, I give to you a movie that I made today. No, there are no camera tricks, that is the actual size of one of my cats (Scrappy, the Cat-Shadow), although some might argue that the camera adds 10 pounds, the last time I took my cat to the vet it was 9 pounds so the camera can’t add that much!

And in case you are wondering, she ACTUALLY does that thing where she “hops up” when I am petting her. You can see it really well when she launches herself at the camera, meowing right before she plops down. This was about the 7th take and I haven’t picked her up yet, so at the end you can see her just staring at me as if she wanted me to spontaneously burst into flame if I didn’t pick her up after THIS time with the camera.

I’m giggling a lot too because, as I said before it took SEVEN TAKES to get her to lay down. Usually she does it after every time I pet her, but she didn’t want to do it for the camera. When I finally got her to do it I just laughed at how ridiculous she looks, and yes, she really does push her way across the floor after she plops most of the time. (I think she itches herself this way)

And yes, I did pick her up after we were finished and gave her attention, even if I was thinking about all the times I almost sprained my ankle trying not to step on her as she was following me around at my heels.

Cats are cute.