myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

2004 was a good year, if any year can be a good year. Everyone was still gathering at monk’s house for burning parties and to play cards. I finally received a job offer that wasn’t at a retail store. Jesse left his job due to a change of job responsibilities and then found a new one in Arlington, Virginia. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why don’t I start at the beginning.

The New Year began with having a bunch of people over on New Years Eve. For those of you who don’t know, this is kind of unusual. December 31st is Jesse’s birthday and he does not exactly want to spend it with other people. He spent his early years going to New Years parties and since he’s been with me, I’ve tried not to do that to him. This year was kind of different. I wanted to do something, he didn’t, so we compromised and I had people come over in the afternoon and we played cards and whatnot. At midnight, everyone was still around. So that’s how we brought in the new year. It was all good.

In early June, we had an unexpected, yet not surprising, addition to our family. When we moved into our apartment last fall, we were able to bring my cat from home with us. Toby came to live with us and after a couple of months of being on her own (she used to live with 1-2 other cats all her life), Jesse and I got the impression that she was lonely. So Jesse talked to his mom to see if she had heard of any kittens that were being given away. The thing about where Jesse is from, there’s a lot of cats. It seems that when people’s cats in Jackson, Michigan have litters and then the people don’t want the kittens, they take them out to Munith and dump them. It’s sad that they do this, but you really can’t stop them. As such, Munith has a pretty large wild cat population. My brother-in-law, Brian, was doing his daily run one night and came across a really young kitten and remembered that Jesse and I were looking for a cat. Needless to say, he brought her home and the next weekend we picked her up. Chaos was a little black furrball that received a bath as soon as we could get her one. We also came to find out that she had a couple of extra toes on her paws. While it’s vastly amusing to watch her use her extra toes as opposable thumbs, Jesse was not crazy about her using her claws to crawl up his leg. Chaos ended up getting her front claws taken out about November.

In August, an event occurred that did change our lives. Jesse was offered a position in Arlington, Virgina. The money was good, there was benefits and the unemployment rate in Michigan was high. With all these considered, moving to Virginia was our best option. We found a place in Alexandria, which thankfully had a free shuttle to the nearest Metro station. Jesse drove out with the cats in late September and I followed the first of October after having dealt with the movers. Jesse and I were apart for about 2 weeks and we still had to wait another week for our furniture to arrive. Needless to say, the movers showed up on Oct. 11th. By that time Jesse had developed permanent back problems from sleeping in a popped air mattress for a month. The plants survived the move and the only thing we forgot was our wedding cake. Of course, that was my fault as it was sitting in my father’s freezer. So we didn’t get a chance to eat our cake for our first anniversary. However, we did get to sleep in our own bed and that was far better.

After a few weeks in Virginia, I started temping with Gilbert Heintz &s Randolph in Washington, D.C. and was offered a full-time position a couple weeks later. What started out as trying something new ended up being a great opportunity. My first day on the job as an employee found me in Philadelphia, PA at trial. From then on, I was assigned to cases with trial dates in the near future.

Dad came out to visit in December and we celebrated Christmas a little early. Mom came out for Christmas (well, the week in between Christmas and New Years) and we had Christmas yet again. For the first time, Jesse and I celebrated New Years in a new state with no one but ourselves. With our new jobs, we were able to start saving some money and do things without haven’t to worry about where the money was coming from. This was actually nice.