October In The Chair

01 - Introduction
02 – Your first love
03 – Your parents (this is long as HELL
04 - What you ate today
05 - Your definition of love
06 - Your day
07 - Your best friend
08 - A moment
09 - Your beliefs (photo insensive)
( 10 – What you wore today )

11 – Your siblings
12 – What’s in your bag
13 – This week
14 – What you wore today
15 – Your dreams
16 – Your first kiss
17 – Your favorite memory
18 – Your favorite birthday
19 – Something you regret
20 – This month
21 – Another moment
22 – Something that upsets you
23 – Something that makes you feel better
24 – Something that makes you cry
25 – A first
26 – Your fears
27 – Your favorite place
28 – Something that you miss
29 – Your aspirations
30 – One last moment

Also, after Timothy's vet visit this week, I was given the cremated remains of Baby and Tinker, which the vet's office had been holding for me since April. I hadn't been able to bring myself to pick them up, but I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Their loss screams at me every day whenever I see Timothy or Henry Lee. Every time I wake up without Baby's warm, purring bulk smashed against the side of my head; every time I take a bath without Tinker hunting for imaginary fish in the water.



It's amusing that Tinker's box is so much larger than Baby's. I put his teeth in there with his cremains.

Today has been an absolute shit-tastic day that has largely resulted in me wanting to burn down banks near and far, but after moping on the couch for most of the night and eating some 85% Green and Black's organic dark chocolate, I'm beginning to feel a bit more human.

The fact that all four snakes are currently cruising around their tanks and making ribbon shapes in the air during their explorations and the fact that Timothy has been draped over my right thigh and straight licking my arm for the past twenty minutes has down many great things to elevate my mood.

Also, thank you one and all for all of your kind thoughts and support over the past two heartbreaking decisions I had to make. It means a lot to me.

The apartment was so weird Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I don't even remember the last time in my life that I didn't have at least one free roaming mammal. I kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye, a dark blur that ghosted across my vision and then was disappointingly gone when I swung full around. I would forget for a time and then something small, something stupid, would bring reality crashing back to me and it would feel like my heart was twisting in my chest all over again.

Wednesday night, the Engineer and I picked up the two kittens we decided to adopt: Timothy and Henry Lee. They are a complete and total joy. So far. It doesn't entirely replace this huge and gaping hole left in the absence of the others, but it blunts the edges down so they are not as sharp.

I was so scared that they would hate me or that one of them would get nervous and bat me hard in the face, like what happened with the incident I mentioned before at a different shelter. But, they are warm and purr like wee crisis engines, twining around my legs this morning in the bathroom and trying to eat my hair when I lie on the floor. I wouldn't even begin to put forth the notion that the level of trust I had with my other cats is even remotely there, but the beginnings of it are poking their way through.

Holiday dinner went as well as to be expected. The turkey fell apart when I tried to hoist it out of the pan when it was done, dinner was an hour and a half late because I'm not so good with time management, and wemble narc'ed my brother out over a piece of pie.

I got strangely and vaguely surly mid-way through the day, which I am attributing to a case of the holiday-ick. I was surprisingly un-hungry and just pushed food around on my plate for twenty minutes, which isn't unusual when I've got a good surly brewing. The pendulum swung back after a bit and I started feeling like more like my normal, slightly chirpy self.

I did, however, at one point inform my father that after he dies and I receive my inheritance from him, I am going to be knee-deep in strippers and blow. He was not nearly as amused by this as I was. But that's ok, because shortly after, he rolled out his annual "Why don't you and Middle Brother talk to Eldest Brother? That's not right; you're family." speech we seem to have the pleasure of hearing every holiday function. Only there were no semi-colons involved because I'm fairly certain my father has no earthly idea of what a semi-colon even is, let alone- how to use one. Not to mention the fact he said it to me and didn't actually type it anywhere.

There is now a boatload of leftovers at my apartment (including two and a half pies!) and I am sitting at work about to eat my boots because I haven't been able to have lunch today and I am starving.

All in all, not to worst of holiday experiences. Despite the brief surly attitude and the bout of weepiness mid-afternoon because I was missing my mom pretty hardcore. Oh, and the cat deciding to run over my face when I was lying on the couch. I am now sporting a rather fetching scratch on my right eyelid which hurts and is swollen. The cat received no leftovers for his trangressions. Little bastard.

I have not one, but TWO boxes of Count Chocula.

It is my absolute favorite and I have hearts for it.

I may or may not be currently coasting out a sugar high from the aforementioned cereal. That decision has not yet been reached. Combine the cereal with the milkshake the Amazing Larry brought over for me earlier this evening when we were getting ready to watch True Blood and I'm a bit twitchy. I'm not used to this much sugar.

During the hanging out part of the evening, TAL and I got into a big conversation/debate regarding politics and racism and all manner of things. It was spirited and I got loud quite a few times. Once he left for the night, and the Engineer had also gone to bed, I remembered one of my old roommates and how she would always react whenever a group of us would start to have any sort of semi-intellectual/world observation conversation while sitting around in a diner or Denny's or high in the living room or whathaveyou.

She never liked it and would always throw the brakes every time it started. Because it made her feel like an episode of MTV's The Real World or some such nonsense.

That should have been a sign.

If this entry is a bit disjointed, blame the sugar high. I think I need to try to sleep.

P.s.
IfI ever get another cat, I think I'm going to name him "John".

It has been suggested on more than one occasion in the past few months that I may have some difficulty with "letting things go".

Confused? Probably not, if'n you know me, but I'll explain further anyway.

I'm more than a touch morbid in that I seem to have an undeniable attraction to dead things. Wee animals in jars, animal skulls, human cremains. It all holds a strange fascination to me, to the point where I actively collect these things.

I've also started talking about preservation methods for my pets. Out of the animals from my household who have died in the past four years, I have more of them in my freezer (and the Engineer's freezer) than I do in the ground or cremation boxes. I've talked about preserving some of them in fluid, in clear jars, for display (and I still think this isn't a bad idea). I've made semi-serious jokes about having my marmelade cat, Baby, taxidermied when he finally dies. But, instead of having him frozen into an unnatural pose, I want him filled with those tiny styrofoam balls they put in squishy pillows. And a heating pad. So I can still sit on the couch and rub his belly into oblivion.

When discussing these things a couple of weeks ago, it mentioned to me that perhaps all of this is the reason why I am so drawn to funeral service and am so determinedly (is that a word?) pursuing my education in it.

And honestly? I am not sure sometimes.

I have an incredibly strong fear of death, which has gotten much worse since my mother died and I have grown older. I obsess over it. I lie in bed in the little hours of night, unable to sleep because my head is full of "what if...?"s. I paralyze myself with thoughts of car accidents, gun attacks, and malignant cancers. A terror grips me when I think of what comes next after this life; my religion has been shaken to its core and barely provides shelter to me any longer.

All of this is so bizarre to me. I used to be perpetually suicidal; I've attempted it three times in my life when I was younger. Everything hurt so fucking much, I just wanted it all to stop. And as I grew older, I recognized I couldn't ever put those I loved through the particular kind of hellish pain the survivors are left holding, but the thought of self-annhilation was never very far from my mind.

Now? The very idea makes me sick to my stomach. Suicide is now an abomination to me. Mine, or anyone else's.

I don't understand any of it, personally. My brain has become such a whirlwind over the past few years that I'm not sure how I even get my boots on, half of the time. I'm so tightly wound, if one were to flick me, I'd probably *ping!* like a fine crystal wine goblet. Which is hilarious when I think about it, because I'm always hollaring at the Engineer for being uptight and how he needs to be more laid-back.

I think I need to go smoke a cigarette and shake this off my back. Who writes this shit on a Saturday afternoon, anyway?



My biggest fear is if I let you go,
You'll come and get me in my sleep.

I'll start with yesterday.

I went to my Introduction to Counseling class. We had our first test to take and were allowed to leave as soon as we were finished. Being that Counseling is a butt-easy class, I was done the test in fifteen minutes. I was in my car and cruising home, with visions of glorious fucking-around-and-doing-nothing-at-home dancing in my head. Maybe I'd study Human Biology for a bit, maybe I'd play some video games. I hadn't really decided at that point; I was more focused on enjoying my drive home.

I get home and immediately go into my room to check my answering machine. On my bed are three of my four cats. Nympho, Mittens, and Lunchbox Tinker. I laid down on the bed and talked to Nympho for a bit because it's so rare to catch him napping in my room. Tinker moseyed up and acted like a douchebag because he hates it when someone else is getting all the attention. Mittens walked up and started to weasel around me for some petting. I reached over and rested my hand on the back of Mittens' neck, in the usual spot where I scratch him, and my fingers touched what I thought felt like a scab.

"What did you do to yourself now, buddy?" I twiddled my fingers gently around his neck, feeling for the dimensions of the scab and trying to figure out if it was Tinker-caused. When I pulled my hand away, it was covered in blood.

I'll repeat that part: covered in blood.

I picked him up to look at his scruff, but his fur is so thick and the lights in my room are rather dim. So, I brought him into the bathroom, where the lighting is much better, and put him on the counter for a better look.

When I parted the fur on the back of his neck, I almost fainted. I seriously got wobbly for a second.

He had a two-inch gash and I could see straight down to what looked like muscle.

I flailed around for a couple of moments, trying to figure out what to do. Should I try to clean it myself? With what? Would he even hold still for something like this? Does he need stitches? Should I take him to the vet? I spun my tires for a bit before decided that yes, I needed to call the vet. Phone calls are placed, the cat is unceremoniously shoved into his carrier, and I get back into my car.

The vet is just as confused as I am about the cut. Mittens hasn't gone outdoors for probably ten or more years. There was no blood anywhere that I could find in the apartment. No one had bloody paws or whiskers. Stumped.

He got his ruff shaved and surgical-glued, I got handed yet another bottle of antibiotics and wrote out even more post-dated checks to be put in my file. At this point, I have checks stretching to July. I shit you not.

Now, with his half-shaven neck and wounded area, he kind of looks like a zombie took a big old bite out of the back of his head. It's semi-disturbing to look at. The Engineer keeps calling him "Zombie Cat".

*sigh*

The lady at the vet's office who I'm friendly with started laughing as soon as she saw me. "You were just here two weeks ago!" Tell me something I don't know, honey. Tell it to my bank account.

Today started out fairly decent. I actually got up early this morning and even had time to wear more make-up than just eyebrows, something which hasn't been happening all that much lately. The decentness doesn't last long. We're in the middle of a document-collecting drive for a new benefits package and the offices are driving me insane with their unwillingness to do what is required of them. Today, however, is payday. Yay! I get my check and it's for roughly sixty-eight hours and is under seven hundred dollars. Boo. And I don't even get the chance to leave the office to cash said check and get some lunch until about two-thirty.

This is where it gets good.

I drive to the bank, which is located in the Devil's Parking Lot. It's in a little shopping center and is surrounded by a handful of stores that are highly visited. It is also made of evil.

I was driving down a row, heading to the teller lane of the drive-through, and marvelling to myself that the drive-through lane was completely empty. It's never empty like that! I'm going to make it back to the office in record time! Hooray!

Then?

WHAM!

A car I was passing suddenly backs out as I am almost half-way done going behind it. My passenger side door crunches and my vision is replaced by a red haze. You know the scenes in Kill Bill when the Bride sees someone that is on her list to kill and she gets those alarm bells sounding off? Yeah, like that.

I get out and see that I was broad-sided by a goddamn Mercedes driving by a goddamn teenage girl. The Eldorado doesn't look all that bad, but the door is mighty scratched up and there appears to be a small dent or three. The bumper of the Mercedes is scratched all to fuck and my hands start shaking. The girl immediately starts apologizing and telling me that this was all her fault and that she didn't check her mirrors and that she'd really rather handle this without contacting any insurance companies. Being that the Eldorado is actually my father's call, I ring him up and ask him what he would like me to do. Which was a fun conversation in itself. My father really hates getting phone calls from me that start out with, "Hi! I have a problem." especially because they almost always wind up having something to do with the damn car.

He tells me to just get all of her information because he doesn't want to involve the insurance companies, either. I remain unconvinced by the wisdom of this, but it's his car and what he says goes. We exchange information (I even write down her license plate number because I just don't trust this shit) and go about our ways.

As I write this, I am still ticked off by the entire affair. But, wait! It all gets better!

Around five-thirty, my cell phone rings and it's Middle Brother calling me.

"Can you leave work? Like right now?"

As it turns out, he was also involved in a car accident. In a bank parking lot. Backed into by some dippy teenage girl who wasn't looking where she was going. Same bank chain, different branch. Different branch parking lot. Same area damaged on his car.

His issue, however, is that the girl who hit him really nailed him. She gassed the shit out of her car and his passenger side back door is dented and scraped all to fuck. And on top of that, the girl is insisting it wasn't her fault. Despite the fact that she backed into him. And despite the fact that even the cop who was called to the scene explained to her several times and in intricate detaill how my brother couldn't have done a single thing to cause the accident.

Shit. Day.

Personally, I'm still kind of baffled over how my brother and I both were involved in almost identical car accidents in the same goddamn day and in the same general environment, sustaining similar damage to our cars.

I have since spent the rest of the night lying on my couch with Baby and watching movies with the Engineer.

So.

I've been wobbly since Emperor Nympho's vet appointment on Thursday (and even moreso since the follow-up vet phone call on Saturday, with test results).

The vet was enormously concerned as soon as she saw and felt the lump on his back. Thought it was a tumor, and a deeply embedded one at that. They aspirated it and sent the core sample out to be tested. She wasn't sure what it was attached to and we discussed several options, like surgery and the like, which all depended on the test results. She thought the lump could be attached to one of his kidneys, due to placement, but wasn't ruling out the idea that it was just skin-related. I left the vet's office that evening with a slightly irritated cat who talked to me the entire drive home about how MUCH he was peeved at me for sticking him in a box and bringing him to the Place of Bad Smells and Pointy Things (tm).

The next day, Joanna and I sat outside of work and talked about how awesome it would be if I got the call from the vet and found out that the tests showed either a. the lump was actually a cupcake, b. the lump was full of Brie (my vote), or c. that Nympho was actually immortal. We went on to discuss at great length how wonderful cupcakes and immortal cats are.

Satuday morning, as I was lying in bed and trying to convince myself to get up, get dressed, and go outside to sit on the apartment steps and wait for my copy of the Harry Potter book (deliveries don't always make it to my apartment, so I wanted to be proactive), I received a call on my cell from the doctor with the results.

Suffice to say, things are not good.

She said the lump is indeed a tumor. Sarcoma. Malignant. Cancer.

She said that in cases like this, surgery is not recommended.

She said that treatment would be taking him for an MRI or a CT scan to see what it's attached to.

She said that treatment would include radiation therapy.

She said that this is incredibly expensive and must be done by a specialist.

She said that without treatment, he only has a a bare handful of months left to live.

She said that with treatment, it would probably only tack another couple of months onto the end of that sentence.

...

I was silent for the majority of this phone call because if I spoke, I would start to cry and the only thing I hate more than crying in front of my friends is crying in front of (basic) strangers. She talked a lot, in a slow and halting voice. The voice of one who knows exactly how badly the news they are breaking is being taken.

I do not have much of a choice in this situation. I can shell out exorbitant amounts of money (even by my standards of pet care, we're talking multiple thousands of dollars) that I don't actually have and put him through extreme stress and discomfort with zero guarantee that this is actually going to accomplish anything. Or I can watch him slowly decline over the next few months until he dies on his own or it gets so bad that I euthanize him. The end result for both options is exactly the same: my cat is going to die. And a lot sooner than I had always thought.

My cat, my thirteen-year old Russian Blue with the rusty old-man meow and the enormous tail, is going to die. My cat, who I have had for almost his entire thirteen years, is going to die. My cat, who has been with me through the best and worst times of my life, is going to die. My cat, who has lived with me in eight apartments and with twenty-some roommates, is going to die.

In a few months.

And I can't do a single thing about it, when it gets down to it. Not a goddamn thing.

This sucks so bad, I can't put it into words.

Since my mother died, there has been one thing I have been absolutely terrified of. One single thing that continually creeps into my brain and keeps me awake at night: the idea of having to once again watch someone I love die slowly as some black and insidious disease eats them away from the inside.

Some people may think I'm overeacting. That I shouldn't be so upset over a pet and shouldn't ever compare it to the death of my mother. If anyone I know believes that, I say this now: you are cordially invited to fuck right off. This is my friend who is going to die before my eyes.

At this point, I'm at a loss. I feel helpless in the face of this. Despite the fact that I know pursuing treatment isn't the best idea, I still feel guilty over making the decision to not do so. Any other time one of my animals has been sick, I have gone to great lengths and spent a lot of money to make them well again. But, putting him throught treatment is just going to make him miserable for no reason. With no cure outcome on the horizon, there's no sense in doing all that. But, I can't help it. I still feel guilt.

On Tuesday, I'll be calling the vet and letting her know my decision. After that, it'll be a lot of little steps and deep breaths.