Why shouldn't I be permanently freaked-out?

Well, I mean, c'mon...

I deal with Really Stupid Questions whenever I am in Eviljob--questions which, if I misinterpret them, could have severe repercussions. Job 2 I sit alone in a dark, locked basement (I haven't gotten to see my office in *weeks*), listening to 'BZZT! BZZT! WARNING! BZZT! BZZT! WARNING! BZZT! BZZT!...' coming out of headsets at barely-audible levels (hence my ability to hear ice cream vans eight hundred miles away), while a battery of Dell XPSs (or whatever they are) glow Demonic Red in the dark. And then I step out into the world to take a break, and meteorologically, it's like The Day After Tomorrow out there.

And I keep forgetting to go to class until about ten minutes before class starts.

Sigh.

Thanks for the good wishes and all. :-*

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The sad, sad truth; the dirty low-down…

Oh, am I going to have to make this quick. I am playing trivia, and when it is over in an hour, I am going to BED. I have to get up extra-early to run around with Meg before she leaves on Thursday for aroundabout ten days to finish visiting friends, some relatives, and a pit-stop for gambling. She’s taking Mummers with her for most of it, so I will be in the doldrums holiday-wise for a few days here. I want to go, but I cannot; I have way too much to do here, and even if I promised to work on the road I wouldn’t have enough time. Plus, I am still sick. But a lot has happened, so…here goes:

1) I am STILL sick. I have seven days of antibiotics left, and those things are going to *kill* me. Gah! And I just can’t stop coughing! Well, I can when I drink half a bottle of Robitussin followed by a two-to-four tablespoon Hycodan chaser…

Though I am trying to back off The Juice. No, rilly—I am cutting it with Robitussin as much as I can and still not bring with me the railing, hacking sounds of a TB ward everywhere I go. Well, and at night, when I need to sleep. Diphenhydramine has *nothing* on good old-fashioned opiates, though I keep sticking the two together in my tum to see if maybe Diphenhydramine could pick up a tip or two. Today is Day Seven of my experimentation in the Post-Ingestion Learning Capacities of Pharmaceutical Agents.

I’ll keep you posted.

2) Chrissy’s Issues. Oh, here we go. Okay—Lisa is GONE. As in like disappeared. Lisa was the one who was running Happy Hills Farms, and she said it was hers—her 503c non-profit thingy-thing. Well, it wasn’t. Lise started off as a helper to some other lady who founded Happy Hills, and when that lady moved to some other state, Lise was supposed to just finish adopting out the animals and then wrap everything up and shut down. Well, she didn’t. Lise’s been running business as usual, taking donations, and blah, blah, blah. This all blew up about a month ago—the *real* Happy Hills lady went to go start up her 503c (or whatever it is), and contacted Lise to get her van and stuff back. So Lise stopped answering her phone. Then Lise offered to sell the Happy Hills van to Chrissy for 8k in cash (it is only a couple of years old, and worth way-more than that) ‘cos Lise told Chrissy that she’d decided to get out of the business. So Chrissy borrowed most of the 8k and went out to Lise’s (not knowing ANYTHING about any ‘real’ Happy Hills lady—as far as Chrissy knew, Lisa IS Happy Hills) to get the van, and Lise was acting funny (per Chrissy), and hemming and hawing about the title to the van (saying that she just couldn’t find it anywhere, but she second she did she’d be rushing it over to Chrissy, etc…). And considering Lise had told Chrissy 8k, cash, FIRM, Chrissy had been dreading asking Lise to give her the title without the full amount. Plus, this is very not like Lise—she is very much the kind of person who would tell you to go fuck yourself if you didn’t have the money. So it struck Chrissy as weird (Chrissy told me that she had a VERY weird feeling the whole time, that from the moment Lise opened the door there were bad vibes everywhere), and Chrissy told Lise to find the title, and phone her when she found it.

Then everything blew up.

What I am told is that the real Happy Hills Lady tried to get in touch with Lise, and when Lise stopped answering her phone, Ms Happy Hills phoned around and found out Lise was up and running, and had a space at PetsMart, and so on…so she phoned PetsMart, and PM ended up asking Lise to leave. And I am sure all kinds of other shit is raining down that I am not privy to, but the short of it is that Chrissy is fucked. Chrissy has around sixty of Lise’s cats, and nowhere for them to go, ‘cos there is no more Happy Hills.

At least not here.

And so I went by yesterday (now that I am feeling better) to talk to the new rescue group at what used to be Lise’s PetsMart on behalf of Chrissy. I told the new lady that before Chrissy helped me, I didn’t know crap about ANYTHING, and without Chrissy’s help, I didn’t know where I would be today, as far as this feral colony goes. I mean, sure—I still don’t have Mehitabel, and there are still two kits out there that need to be trapped and fixed in the next week or so, but I HAVE trapped and neutered a bunch from that colony, and I HAVE caught and homed seven of her kittens (not counting the ENTIRE last litter that the other girl at Eviljob caught), and I HAVE re-homed two that weren’t feral at all, but were lost or abandoned pets. Plus, I am only one person and this is an imperfect world, and there is (I have finally accepted) no such thing as a feral rescue group ANYWHERE IN THIS AREA. No one wants feral cats, no one will help adopt out feral cats, feed feral cats, or ANYTHING feral cats…the only reason I have had any help is just because Chrissy and a few other people have been being nice. So it’s Just Me. And I will be re-starting shortly.

Butsoanyway.

So after I convinced New Lady that I wasn’t hitting her up to take feral cats, I tried to talk to her about Chrissy, who is screwed. New Lady said that she might be willing to work out something, but Chrissy would have to help her—submit to a home inspection, and work as a foster mom for a bit while they tried to carousel some of these animals out, ‘cos—catch this—Chrissy is only one of about FIVE or SIX people who have already contacted New Lady, ‘cos Lisa’d stuck them with a shiteload of cats and dogs under the guise of ‘fostering’ them (which translates into warehousing them). So I phoned Chrissy and left a message for her to let her know what’s going on. She is very depressed; she said that for almost a month straight, she’s done nothing but watch TV and cry. When I phoned her she was crying because of something she’d seen on Judge Judy, or whatever; it took her thirty minutes to get the whole story out to me. Plus I got to hear about Judge Judy. This is bad, it’s really bad. I don’t know what is going to happen, but…

Sigh. It will work out somehow. I’ll let you know.

Oh—and—when I went to Eviljob to feed the cats today, I was late (I overslept), and the two remaining kittens were sitting out by where I put the food, waiting for me in meatloaf position. Why do I do this? THAT is why I do this. They believe in me; they have trust in their tiny little furry hearts that I will come and bring food. They need me. God only knows they don’t have anyone or anything else, and the way things are shaping up, they probably never will.

Rhett and Cookie are fine, by the way. I guess with this recent turn of events, I am stuck with them—the only place I had to take them was Lisa’s, where the plan was that I’d pay her $80 each and she’d slip them into a cage at PetsMart, as long as I brought proof of speuter, vaccinations, and negative FIV/FeLV, like she did with the other cats she took from me.

Yes, that *was* the plan…I was kinda hoping they could be Christmas Cats for someone. Only that ‘someone’ is ME. Sigh. S’ok. I love them. :-) And Squooshable loves them, too.

Well, shit…what am I SUPPOSED to do? Drop them back off at Eviljob? They are totally tame and loving pets now. And there’s nowhere for them to go, especially if there’s going to be a glut of pet cats coming in from all of Lisa’s crap. Plus I love them, and they love me—I’m their Mom. Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind. Or Forgotten.

3) With all this happiness afoot, I have to devote a number to the fact that it’s the most wonderful time of the god damned year. And I am making so motherfucking merry that I could just spit.

Or, well, I will. Eventually.

I have put no lights up, I haven’t decorated a damned thing. I feel like I have been in a holding pattern, waiting for something to end before I can get started with this merriment thing. And seriously, now—I make my own merriment. I mean, something goes wrong EVERY FREAKING YEAR. Every year. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Gang aft agley my ass; every year it’s like a damn free-for-all to see how stressed and strung out I can get, how much running around I can be made to do, and so on. If a fiasco is going to go down, it’s going to go down right in the middle of my farkety Holiday Season. And, might I remind you, that I am supposed to be like, happily married by now? Uhhh…yeah.

Now, I have managed two rather ok outings recently, but…that isn’t the point. And I don’t know if I am going to be up for any future outings. So anyway…

My point is that I am really becoming violently miserable, and here a goodly chunk of my family is abandoning me for the god damned holidays. Well, sort-of. Okay, they *say* they’ll be back by the 22^nd (or whenever), but…whatever. I am completely out of holiday ideas. I am dry. Done. Kaput.

So here’s the holiday plan: I am going to go drive around and look at Christmas lights. This week. I might even take Squooshable with me. I am going to go look for houses that can be seen from Frogstar World B, and those that look like they have merely been invaded by radioactive spiders. And then, once I am off the damned antibiotics, I am going to watch stupid movies on the Hallmark Channel and probably get drunk.

Oh, yes... There will be egg nog.

Butsoanyway. Enough of my misery.

4) Number four was really number three before I went and got all distracted. It has to do with the fact that I can start off looking at Christmas lights on my own street, seeing as how the U-Haul tricks arrived today. Yes, U-Haul. A neighbour up the street brings U-Haul trucks (usually two small ones, occasionally one medium one) every year to unload the Christmas decorations. The whole family comes out, or over, and by Sunday evening, it’s up.

Well, it’s up.

This year they have polar bears, igloos, see-saws, lights framing the lawn, driveway, and the outline of the house, two Santas on the roof, and at least two snow globe blowy things. Plus some other stuff I am surely forgetting. It’s awesome. Although I haven’t decided if I like it or not.

5) I have forgotten what number five is and the game is over, so I am just going to sleep. G’night.

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People stop and stare at me; we just walk on by...

I just hate dreaming sometimes. I mean *really*.

I got off early from Eviljob (and yes, fed the cats even though I didn’t see them), came home, and promptly feel into one of those DEEP sleeps where you wake up completely disoriented and freezing cold in a dark room, wondering who in the hell could be phoning you at this god-forsaken hour, not that you know what hour it is.

So I accomplished little today, but that’s not surprising at all to me, ‘cos I am just completely burnt-out. I really, really am. The only things I accomplished at Eviljob today was readying my vacation and getting into a disagreement with a co-worker who insisted that Ciao is a native, non-appropriated French word.

Just shoot me.

I don’t remember what the commercial(s) were for, but stuff like this reminds me of those commercials a little while ago where one employees explains to his co-workers that they have fringe benefits, not French benefits, and so on. I empathise with that guy; I have given up on trying to get one especially annoying line at work changed from ‘perk’ to ‘perq’; I have also given up on ‘ladie’s’ and ‘ensem’ (as in the fingernails-on-a-blackboard-like request, ‘please be sure you are in an appropriate ensem at the company picnic’).

BWAAH!

And yes, I have *seen* a memo that says that, ‘for all intensive purposes we will be launching X on Y date’. I work with ‘conversating’ people who get ‘flustrated’ over the latest security ‘install’. And I could go on. No really—I could; I am trying to remember a really funny one I read just the other day, but it is escaping me. I was on the phone with a friend watching Flavour of Love when New York said that it would be ‘beneful’ for them to be apart for a while. Yes. Beneful. As in the dog food. I had to translate for the person with whom I was speaking—after all this time at Eviljob, I parse ‘beneful’ without a moment’s hesitation. It means full of benefit.

You know—kind of like the dog food.

Sigh.

Bear in mind that I am only kvetching to take my mind off the fact that today I got nothing done and even lost out on a really good dream. And it is now officially the 22^nd, which is always a sucky-assed day in October, anyway.

My apologies to anyone born on this day. Well, except for one person—I don’t apologise to one particular person who fricking made this a sucky-assed day a few years ago.

Butsoanyway.

Speaking of FoL and thinking about sex (now there’s two topics that don’t often converge in my mind), I think that is is tres-way sick that New York didn’t stand up for herself when Flav wouldn’t answer her question about whether or not he was sleeping with Deelishis. Blecch…if you are sleeping with someone, you sure do have the right to know who else they are having sex with! Flav, you’ve disgusted me. That clip (from the Belize episode, where Flav and NY are out on the boat with Gary Busey…Gary Busey *was* there, right? ;-) ) should be shown to every sex ed class on Earth. Girls, leave any man who behaves like that! Stat! That was practically a textbook example of a bum trying to weasel out of answering a legitimate question by blaming the woman, calling her mad, bad, or wrong. And whatever happened to a girl having some class and pride? New York not only took that shit, she went on to sleep with him *again* that night! That girl has the self-respect of a turnip. I could go on, but Ms Grammarian pretty much already said anything I could say a little over a month ago. I was just so, so, SO disgusted and offended as a female by that one part. And I am not saying that New York isn’t crazy as a loon, but I *am* saying that it sets a REALLY BAD EXAMPLE to let some jerk get away with treating a woman (with whom he is having sex) as if her request to know who his other (and previous) sex partners are is a ridiculous request. I do watch FoL for the same reason others watch bad traffic accidents, but…there are impressionable chirrin watching that show who don’t know the difference. I don’t like Flav as much as I used to. Icky. If I were New York’s mother, I would have beaten her senseless(er) after seeing that. And dragged her out for an AIDS test and a flea-dip. Blecch.

Butsoanyway.

Speaking of fleas, as far as kitties go I think my plan now is to just catch the other kittens when they are old enough to be spayed/neutered, make them so, and then put them back. I guess that is all I can do. And I have to get one more whatever vaccination for Rhett and Cookie, and then find them a home. They need to go together, ‘cos Rhett relies on Cookie. Cookie is REALLY smart, and Rhett is, well…he’s a boy. A kind of stoopid boy. A really slovenly, slightly stoopid boy. But he loves me. :-) And I do love him. And please note that Cookie agrees with me that he’s a tich stoopid—he sits in his water dish and then gets up and sits in the (clumping) litter box, fer chrissake. Sometimes, he’ll then go back to sit in the water or food. Cookie and I are simply tired of cleaning him up. It’s kind of funny—it really is like Cookie got the manual on how to be a cat, and Rhett was watching football when it was handed out, or something. Back when I had them in a cage, Rhett knocked over (again!) the water dish, and he was just sitting in it until he noticed that Cookie had jumped into the litter box and was dry. So then he went into the litter box, only it was too late—he was soaked. So I opened the cage to pull them out, dry them off and fix the flood, and Cookie leapt out of the litter box (over all the water) and came over to me, purring. Rhett saw her do this, and tried to copy her—he jumped out of the litter box *into* the water (he’s much porkier than Cookie), and then ran into my lap, coating me in clumping litter and kitty water. GAH! He was dripping all over Cookie and me, and she just looked up at me as if she were saying, ‘he’s SO STOOPID!!’ Cookie’s just given up and adapted to Rhett—he eats all her food and monopolises their toys. No really—I have to let her eat by herself sometimes to make sure she gets enough to eat! I don’t know what Rhett thinks he is accomplishing by starving her, though…who would clean him if she were gone?

I like to classify my cats as humans (and vice versa sometimes!), and if Rhett were human, he would be a lot like Sandy Lyle in Along Came Polly. It was really funny to watch Rhett try to imitate Cookie and walk across the roof of the cage—Cookie managed it with agility, leaping up to the top shelf and zipping across the roof; Rhett lumbered up and fell down about twenty times before he finally made it, but that’s ‘cos he’s close to twice the size of Cookie (or maybe more) avoirdupois-wise. That’s a lot to hang upside-down.

But he is cute—he has very fine, thin, super-short fur that I swear to god feels almost like *skin*, and when I came home today, he fell asleep on me at some point in my nap. He will be a good companion to someone, just as soon as he quits using his claws so much. And he purrs whenever he sees me (Cookie does, too). And he thinks I am his mom.

Okay, I need to quit talking about cats and get to sleep. I didn’t take the day after Halloween off, and I (again) opted to stay home instead of going anywhere (I am getting *so* old-and-boring), so I don’t know how this Halloween will go. I looked back in my archives, and realised that I never posted last year’s Halloween post (I may try to find it and put it up later)—Mom came over because she enjoys annoying me, I spent most of the night trying to keep a Halloween bow on Squooshable, and Mom actually told a gaggle of kids on my front lawn to throw candy at me ‘cos I fussed at her about something, AND THEY DID! And I still haven’t posted anything about The Haunted Shed, so before they get it up and running this year (yes, I am going to visit again if they do), I had better describe it quickly in case I need to refer to it again. Here goes:

Kids build a haunted attraction in a shed, which they call a haunted house. Put up signs—COME TO THE HAUNTED HOUSE! $1.00! Meg and I are driving by and see it, so we stop. I am nice, so I pay a dollar each for Meg and myself to go in, but we have to go in one at a time, ‘cos it’s a small shed. Meg goes in and is all tight-lippedly ‘okay, nice job, kids; that was great—let’s go’. I felt kind of bad because if I were a kid, I would be hoping that my haunted shed would be a good one, so when it was my turn to go in, I decided to pretend to be scared. So I go in, and they have a strobe light, some cobwebs and stuff, and two boys who jump out—one at the beginning, when you first come in, and one at the other side of the shed, right before you leave through the door at the other end of the shed. I said ‘eek!’ to the first one, and then decided that was kind of lame of me. I could see the other boy ready to pounce, so I got ready, figuring I’d be making his day; when he jumped out at me, I let out a huge scream, and yelled, ‘A GHOST!’. So then I open the exit door and the kids outside came running over, asking me if I was okay. Meg asked me what in the hell was wrong with me. I kicked her, and told the kids it was a really cool, scary haunted shed, errr, house. The two boys in the shed came out and took off their masks to show me that it wasn’t real, and another girl asked if I wanted her to go get her mom or the police. At this point Meg rolled her eyes, threw up her hands, and walked back to her car. I tried telling the kids that I was really okay, but they wanted me to sit down and catch my breath (???). Finally, Meg rolls down her window, and yells, ‘LET’S GO!’. As I walked away, one of the girls asked if I was going to sue them. I assured her that I wouldn’t, that I thought it was a really cool haunted shed they have there. I got in the car, and as we are driving away Meg tells me that I am the biggest moron ever. I tell her I was just trying to give the kids an ego-boost, ‘cos it really was kind of a crappy haunted shed. I mean, I totally saw the first boy jump out at Meg before she closed the door, and I also saw the second kid *way* before I was near him ‘cos he kept peeking out from behind a box or whatever it was. Meg asked if I wanted her to go back and drop me off there so that I could help them improve it. I tell her no, that I have my own shed, and I might just steal their idea and make it my own; I think there’s a market for haunted sheds. Meg tells me that I am an idiot. I tell her she’ll change her tune once I have built my Haunted Shed empire and she needs poker money. Meg responds that the one girl seemed to possess a particularly litigiously-oriented nature, and Meg felt that stealing their idea would be ill-advised. We go on to wherever it was we were headed, and on the way back see that the Haunted Shed has quite a few patrons in line. I think this is really cool—I like seeing industrious kids happy. Meg couldn’t care less if I paid her to.

And that is the saga of The Haunted Shed.

In Unrelated News, I just found this out—did everyone else already know this?

Alfred Kahn, an economic advisor to Jimmy Carter, upset the president and his cabinet by stating that the country's huge inflation could lead to a recession, or even "deep, deep depression." He was chastised for this assessment and told that words like "recession" have a very negative connotation and poor political implications. Unfazed, Kahn told the cabinet that he would use the word banana instead, as in "Between 1973 and 1975 we had the deepest banana that we had in 35 years." However, after banana companies started to complain he changed the word to kumquat.

(From Everything2.com)

That is very, very funny.

Okay, now I really, truly have to go to sleep; I have to pick up that dream where I left off!

Hugs.

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