“Shunshine! I HATE shunshine!”
Today is a wonderful rainy day. I love it! Just call me Madame Mim.
Anyway, last night, I went to Duke Campus, because Greg had a show there with Jay, as Electric Funeral. I am never going to a show on Duke Campus again – it fucking sucked. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, once Jeremy and Kimmie showed up, and once Electric Funeral started playing – then I enjoyed myself. And we also saw Whiskey (real name John David, so J.D. yields Greg’s nickname), one of Greg’s ex-student assistants, who is now a cameraman in Los Angeles. Exciting! I got to tell him and Kimmie about how I got to watch the filming of the fashion show in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and how Keith Coogan, my huge crush at the time, was a total jerk to me when the guy we were visiting (Ellsworth Chou, the electrician, and a friend of my parents’) took me over to meet him. (I think this is partly why I’m so happy when actors I like turn out to be nice in real life.) Also, I just checked Ellsworth’s IMDB page – holy shit, he worked on one of my favorite bad movies of all time: Strays. How did I not know this? WTF. Anyway, if you haven’t seen Strays, you really need to. It’s awesomely bad.
So, Duke’s student union was pretty posh. Of course, it would be, since they’re all private and rich and stuff. There was a grand piano just chilling in one corner, in case you felt like tickling the ivories. There was a WHOLE post office in the student union – bigger than the actual post office in its own building down the street from us in Durham. Duke’s student union has a bigger post office than my local post office. Damn. There was also an entire actual fucking bank in there, next to the post office. Not just an ATM, a full service walk-in motherfucking bank. Insane. (The closest UNC has is a little office-sized walk-in Wachovia counter, with only one or two tellers. It’s about the same size as my cube, actually, maybe a little bigger. The bank at Duke’s student union? Bigger than my actual bank.) There *should* have been divans in the restroom, but there weren’t.
Speaking of the toilets, Greg and I grabbed some food at the Armadillo Grill before the show, and then after eating went in search of the toilets. We round a corner, and I see a hall off in the distance that looks promising, so I point at it and tell Greg we should head that way. Between where we are standing and the far-off hall, on the line of pointing (I think that’s the explanation), was a table of snotty-looking girls. As we pass them, one of them looks at me and says, “Bitch!” And then as we continue past I hear another say something like, “Did you see her just…” and then I can’t hear anymore. So I tell Greg, “I think that girl just called me a bitch.” But I can’t quite believe it. We finally find the bathrooms, and as we’re coming back, we pass them again, and I hear one of them say, “There she is again….” and then I pass out of hearing range. What the fuck. All I can think of is they must have thought I was pointing at them? Who knows. Then there were tons of Duke students who would just stand around vapidly in my way, and no amount of “Excuse me, pardon me, could I just get past you, please?” would get their attention or get them to move, so I ended up having to squeeze past as nicely as I could. (Normally I just barge rudely past, but I’d already been called a bitch for nothing, so I was feeling meek.) All in all – not fucking impressed.
But I enjoyed Electric Funeral, and I loved getting to see Jeremy and Kimmie, and Jay and Wendy, and Whiskey.
Jotting this down because it resonated, and I want to be able to remember it. It’s from Thich Nhat Hanh’s No Death, No Fear, which I borrowed from the library, but will probably end up buying. Until I do buy it, though, I want to be able to remember/revisit this:
“Imagine that you had to please all those of higher rank in order to stay safe. How would you live? Would you be relaxed and in the present moment? Or in constant worry about the future? The habit energy of anxiety would be very strong.”
It’s hard to sum people’s experiences up, even when they’re your own experiences. But if you *were* going to put me in a nutshell, that passage would be probably be a damn good start.
Lately, I feel like life in general, and therapy in specific, is a constant stream of me re-realizing things I’ve already realized – but for some reason they won’t stick in my head. Like, that if I don’t say something is irritating me, it festers. I knew this in fucking high school, but seem to have forgotten it since then. Or that my anxiety is pretty much a direct result of my formative years, and trying to keep my dad happy (or at the very least, not violently angry), or trying to anticipate things, have contingencies for everything: “Plan A in case he’s alright, Plan B in case he’s depressed and internalizing it, Plan C in case he’s acting out, Plan D in case he gets volatile and we have to react quickly…” Etc, etc, etc. I *know* this, I lived it, so why does it feel like such fresh insight when I read it in this book? I guess sometimes our lived experiences just don’t hit home consciously all the way, if that makes sense. It’s one thing to *feel* something, it’s another thing to *know* it. Just like it’s one thing to *know* something, and it’s another thing to *feel* it. (Like, for instance, rationally, I *know* we’ll be safe moving back to the house, but obviously part of me doesn’t *feel* that we’ll be safe.) Or the difference between knowing and believing.
Skeeter usually doesn’t worry about anything. We might pretend he’s dumb as a post, but at least he’s got that figured out.
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Ahahahahahha. Because I am twelve, and loooooove toilet humor. Thanks, Dispatches from the Island!
(AUGH! Why am I on the computer still? Well, I know why: because Jorge Garcia is a funny and amusing blogger, and I have poop links to peruse! But I need to be not staring at the monitor half an hour before bed, because that is bad sleep hygiene.)
Audible cat farts: surprisingly not stinky, actually. (Sorry, that should probably be in LOLCAT form. Well, fuck it.)
Speaking of cats, here is a picture of Skeeter and Chalupa peacefully sharing one carrier (we do have two, actually) right after we moved into the apartment, back in July. (That we are moving out of in two weeks – and I can’t wait and am totally excited, but also – because I’m kinda nuts – totally anxious about.) It was both cute and sad at the time the picture was taken – cute because they were actually touching each other and not squabbling about it; sad because they were touching each other without squabbling because they were freaked the fuck out about the apartment.
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(I’m trying something new with the pictures – making them bigger than thumbnails so you don’t have to click to embiggen them unless you *really want to*. And if you do, you can still click to see them even bigger. Maybe because you’re secretly obsessively in love with my cats, and you need the biggest pictures possible for decorating your shrine with. I’m not judging, I’m just enabling. Anyway, we’ll see how this new picture shit works out.)
This morning, I went to the doctor’s. The actual general practitioner doctor’s, not my therapist’s. Under normal situations (whoever just scoffed at me using “normal” can shut it right now), I don’t sleep so well. I’m a light sleeper, it’s hard for me to get to sleep, and it’s hard for me to stay asleep. Practicing proper sleep hygiene has helped, and I’m pretty good about it, except that I am a wee bit slack about going to bed at exactly the same time every night. (I’m no night owl by any stretch of the imagination – but seriously, what are the weekends FOR? If I can’t stay up past ten-thirty and pretend I’m not already an old lady?) But my sleeping has been getting steadily more disturbed over the past month – could be any number of things, but my money’s on moving back into the house. Which is kind of ridiculous, since I cannot fucking wait to get out of this apartment and back into the house. 1-ANY place we live could get broken into; my sense of security in previous and current apartments is largely due to the fact that they weren’t broken into – but that doesn’t mean they were impregnable. Given that fact, and all the perks the house has, I’d prefer to move back into the house. 2-We’re turning on the security system and getting a dog (looks like a bigger dog than I had initially expected, too). I will feel much safer in the house. 3-Quite frankly, if worse comes to worse, I like my chances confronting a would-be burglar breaking into my house while I’m home better than my chances in a confrontation with our scary apartment complex neighbor I had to call the cops about once. (I haven’t mentioned that yet, because I didn’t want to risk anyone he knows finding out *I’m* the one that called the cops, and that getting back to him. I’ll relate the story later. It’s pretty short, but this is already getting long.) Seriously, though – would-be burglar? Probably going to turn and run. Somewhat emotionally/psychologically unbalanced individual with rage and violence issues who’s also hopped up on drugs? Probably going to beat my ass up. I’ll take the robber, thanks.
But my sleep has been getting more and more fucked up. I have valerian and melatonin supplements that I occasionally take (separately, not together) to help me sleep. They stopped working. Benadryl stopped working. The only thing that would work is clonopin, because it got me to stop *thinking* so damn much that I couldn’t get to sleep. And it’s not that I’m worrying about anything in specific, lying awake freaking out about the house – it’s more that I’m anxious and keyed up, and that results in me just not being able to turn the thinking off or down enough to get to sleep at night, and I find thousands of things to consider, replay in my head, remind myself to remember the next morning, and bam! it’s three a.m. and I’m not asleep yet. In the first place, I don’t want to have to take clonopin every night to get to sleep – that’s not a good solution. In the second place, the clonopin stopped working. So I went to my doctor. Now I have something called hydroxyzine HCl (generic for Atarax), that’s like a more hardcore benadryl. Ambien has some crazy side-effects (sleep-eating, for real), and is somewhat habit-forming, so she wanted me to try this out first. If it works, awesome. If not, then I get Ambien. I’m hoping this works, because Ambien’s a little scary.
While I was at the doctor’s, I also asked about my elbow. You might remember I fell on it twice in an hour (two separate places) two months ago, and ended up going to the ER to get x-rays and shit? I didn’t break anything, and it started to get better. Except that it’s still sore sometimes, especially when I put pressure on it. (Like if I roll over in bed – and I am CONSTANTLY rolling over in my never-ending search for the cooler part of the bed/pillow – and prop myself up on that elbow? YIKES.) And then there’s that squishy, squeaky thing that sometimes is in there, and you can kind of push it around and feel it squeaking, and it’s totally gross. I thought I better have that looked at in case it was something that needed taking care of. I didn’t think it was – but I’d hate for it to bite me in the ass a couple years later. All, “Remember that one time I *wasn’t* a total hypochondriac? Well, I should have been – because now I have to get an elbow-ectomy! Goddammit! That’ll teach me to chill the fuck out.” Anyway, it turns out, basically, I’ve fucked up my bursa – the fluid-filled sac that cushions my elbow. (You have several bursae – they’re around basically all your major joints; I’m just talking about the elbow one, though.) It’s still irritated, and it might sort itself out eventually, but more likely it’ll be like this the rest of my life. Awesome. Anyway, when the squeaky stuff is in my elbow, it’s because my bursa is inflamed, which is probably due to putting pressure on it. It’s not really a problem – I just ice it when it hurts, and that’s that. There’s a small possibility that when I initially fell on my elbow two months ago, and the bursa swelled up (swole? I know it’s not a real word, but I kind of love it), that blood might have gotten into it. If that’s the case, it could get infected, which would be pretty serious. But if that happens, it’ll get really swollen, and red, and it’ll be warm/hot/feverish to the touch, and then I get my ass to the doctor with a quickness. But that’s all not very likely, so it’s basically chill, and ice it as necessary.
And in about an hour and a half, I get to try out this Atarax shit. I think it’s just going to be a matter of getting back in the house, and sleeping in the house, and the longer I’m in the house and nothing bad happens, the better I’ll be, and the better my sleep will be. But I want a little help at first, because I *really* don’t need to be not sleeping for a while, because I will be cranky, and the lack of sleep will make my anxiety worse, and the worsened anxiety will make my sleeping worse, and vicious cycle ensues. So, sleeping pills.
Actually, it’s kind of similar to my last-resort plan for introducing the cats to the new dog: tranquilizers. And I mean, REALLY last resort. I don’t want them on tranqs if they don’t absolutely need to be, and pilling the cats (especially Chalupa) is soooo beyond a pain in the ass, I can’t even do it justice. Chalupa’s skittish, and she’s basically going to hide out in the bedroom, or in my craft room (which will be the absolutely-dog-free zone), until she’s ready to deal. That’s just her, we’re ready for it. We could get the best, cat-friendliest, calmest dog in the world, and she’d still disappear and lay low for at least a couple days. Bless her, but she’s skittish to the point of “we really should just stop calling it skittishness and admit she has some real issues.” I mean, it’s been, what, three, four years, and she’s pretty comfortable with us, but still occasionally skittish around us if we happen to move too quick for her. Which is sometimes, not that quick at all, pretty slow in fact. “Oh, hey, you’re sitting on the couch, and I’m all the way across the room from you, but I turned my head more than a millimeter per second and whoops! There you go under the couch. See you tomorrow, Chacha. I’ll try to bribe you out with treats, but you’ll wait until I go to bed to leave the safety of the couch, by which time they will have long, long, LONG ago been gobbled up by Mr. Piggles, by which I mean Skeeter.” Whatever, she’s ours, she’s wonderful, we love her.
Skeeter tends to react to dogs the way they react to him, at least when he’s met them face-to-face, or through the carrier at the vet’s: if they’re interested or indifferent, so is he; if they’re more assertive/aggressive/in his face, he swipes them on the snout and hisses, then puts space between himself and the dog – but has never freaked out, really. So I think that’s promising. Plus – one of his favorite games, that Chalupa is not that into, is chase. So I think once he and the dog get used to each other, he’s going to fucking love it, and some of the onus will be off Chalupa, at least where that game is concerned. So, that’s the starting point.
And we’re getting a dog that’s been fostered with cats, and knows how to coexist with them, so there’s that. Then I’m making the craft room a dog-free zone, so the cats can have a refuge if/when they need it. I’ve stocked up on Feliway, and will be plugging that in a week before we move back into the house, so the minute the cats get in the house, it already smells friendly and stress-reducing, to minimize the jarring of moving back to the house and having to meet a dog soon thereafter. I’ve got Rescue Remedy on hand, catnip, some new toys, treats, better quality catfood (I mean, I don’t feed them shit, but I stepped it up and got some even better stuff to get them whatever edge better nutritional support can give them for this). We’ve thought about it alot, and are still thinking about it. The dog won’t be allowed near them unsupervised until everyone’s copacetic and we know the dog is 100% trustworthy and won’t try to eat them. I think it’s going to work. I’m pretty sure it’s going to work. Probably not overnight, but it’ll be cool. But on the off chance that everyone just gets stressed out, we’ve got tranquilizers as a last resort – to mellow everyone out long enough for them to get used to each other before interacting while sober. I seriously don’t think it’ll come to that, honestly. But I’m just saying – that’s kind of a similar strategy to me and the sleeping pills, just a little medicinal support during the rough stuff, til I can manage on my own.
I’m working on a longer blog – actually editing a pic right now – but just had to share that I JUST HEARD MY CAT FART!!!!
Sweet jesus, no good can come of this. The few cat farts I’ve experienced have all been silent and deadly, and this one sounded like one of mine. Surely the fact that it’s making noise means there is some fucked up shit going on in Skeeter’s bowels.
If the stench doesn’t kill me, more blogging (and a picture – yeah, a whole ONE, I’m so generous) in a minute.
Rosemary mint shampoo and conditioner might seem like an awesome idea, and it certainly smells amazing – but when a little runoff rinse water gets in your eyes, it burns like a motherfuck. And then when the amount of peppermint is so much higher in the conditioner, it does not matter a damn bit how hot the water is, it will still feel cold on your head.
But my hair smells incredible, and it’s super duper clean, too, so there’s that.
Seriously – how have I gone this long without discovering that Jorge Garcia has a blog?!? I’m an asshole.
But I found it today, so now I’m a happy asshole. 
I woke up this morning, after an unpleasant dream, so I called Greg in (he’d gotten up earlier than me) to tell him about it: we adopt a dog, take him home, he and the cats seem to be getting along great and loving each other, so we leave to go get some groceries. When we get back, I go into the living room to find that someone has taken a shit on our couch, but all the pets are sitting together on the floor, so I don’t know who the offender is. I put on a thin plastic glove, and get a paper towel, and go to clean it up – and in the dream I can *feel* the warmth of the shit, and smell it strongly.
After I finish telling Greg my dream, he says, “I know why you dreamt that – Skeeter just took a huge dump and didn’t cover it up, and it’s been stinking up the entire apartment.”
Ladies and gentlemen, my cat.
ALSO! He jumped up on the couch last night (while I was watching The Maltese Falcon, which I didn’t like as much as I’d expected), and FARTED IN MY FACE! And I wanted to die. I don’t know what we’ve been giving that cat to make his farts soooo bad, because I swear I’ve smelled them before and, while they’ve been bad, they haven’t been lethal like this. I cannot imagine any dog we would own could possibly have any worse farts than the one Skeeter ripped last night. Just as bad, probably, but not any worse. Unless we fed it a steady diet of catshit and rotten meat, which we won’t be doing.
They are both entranced right now by the bubbler. They’ve been staring at it for about five minutes. I turned the bubbles up last night (I don’t know if that means the water is even more aerated or what), but they are really into it. I guess I’m getting my money’s worth: they’re both drinking plenty of water and not getting constipated, PLUS they’re clearly entertained. On the slight downside, they’re drinking so much water and pissing so much as a result, that the litterboxes need scooping about twice as often. But I’m okay with this, since it means no constipation.
Well, I must be fucking psychic: Skeeter just puked up an ungodly amount. He seems to be alright now, but that was a lot of puke. It also smelled very strongly and exactly like bacon and eggs (and no, we haven’t been feeding him people food, just cat food), so it’ll probably be a while before I eat facon and eggs again.
He looks a little worn out after all that puking – I kind of feel sorry for the little guy, and want to take him in the bedroom with me and snuggle him. On the other hand, if he’s got more of that insane vomiting to do, I want him outside the bedroom. Hm. A tiny part of the puke looked like a hairball, but I didn’t want to do any really detailed examination. If he does have a hairball, I don’t think he’s done bringing it up – they’re usually larger than the little thing I saw in the puke.
Aw. Poor little dude. I think I’ll just give him some hairball medicine (in the hopes that, if he does have a hairball, it’ll pass out the other end), and leave the bedroom door open. If he’s on the bed and starts puking, I should wake up to the “hut, hut, huuuuuuuuut” sounds he makes in the beginning, and be able to get him off the bed before he barfs. (Puking on the bed isn’t a huge problem – wow, I would never have expected me to say that – anyway, but doing laundry here is a pain in the ass, so I’d prefer not to have to change the sheets and wash them if it can be avoided. Wiping up the carpet and using Nature’s Miracle is much preferable to that. And, oh, how I cannot wait to be in a house with wood floors again!)
more animals
Not that there’s been any barfing lately. Although now that I’ve typed that, there will probably be some tonight.
