Lost Entries
I'm putting these up from the very long time I was incognito. It helps put the past few months of silence into perspective.
07/18/03 Today, I got this in my e-mail.
"Hello Skatter,
How are you doing? I'm sorry I missed your call. I tried to call you but the phone just keep ringing and ringing. No answering machine or derek to pick up. It's 590-0097, right?
Look why don't you call me after work tomorrow. I'm worried about you and this time I'll stay put (to answer your phone). I found a very good counsoler in this area. You do have full time position with benefits right? That's another thing I'm trying to contact with you about. I didn't want you to go to someone yucky, someone who will mess you up instead of helping you.
See you later,
Cathy"As a measure of what a horrible person I am, I really just wanted to respond by telling her, "Bitch, just back the fuck off. I was ONLINE, which is why you couldn't get through. I don't fucking want to talk to a goddamned counselor, and I certainly don't want you poking around in my fucking mental health."
I'm not going to say that. We've been friends for over a decade at this point, and she really does care. I dropped off the face of the planet, as far as she was concerned, for two weeks.
I react poorly when people make a serious effort to help me in some way. I found a note a few weeks back from a friend named Amanda, who'd gone to the school counselor to report the abuse I was suffering at home. The note was begging me not to be angry with her, because she'd done it to help me. I'd completely forgotten about this incident until I found the note, but I do remember how violated I felt at the time. I remember threatening to never speak to her again. I don't remember being brought before the counselor to talk about the abuse, so I don't remember the aftermath.
That was real, and I needed help, but I was honestly going to cut Amanda off for doing this.
Right now things are pretty bad. Brent's dad died under suspicious circumstances, and by the time he even found out his father was dead, he'd already been embalmed. As his stepmother had previously tried to check his dad out of the hospital while he was in critical condition in an apparent attempt to kill him, and as his father's will had been changed (under dodgy circumstances -- the attorney hadn't even gotten identification from the man who'd made the changes to prove that it was his father) last Friday to make the stepmother the executer of the will, it really doesn't look right.
08/21/03 I'm eating something that has been optimistically named "Quaker Oatmeal Breakfast Squares." It promises all the nutrition of a bowl of instant oatmeal. I got it free from the Sunday paper at my father's house, so I'm just glad of something to eat. (Ten minutes later: Ugh. It sits in the stomach like a rock that hates me.) We're going through some mighty lean times right now, saving up to kick out our room mates.
Good news: I got a promotion, which means more money. This is all kinds of good news -- the next step is getting a job in human resources.
Dirk & I are learning to appreciate each other more, rely on each other. This doesn't mean that I don't sometimes want to smack him into next week, but there's a lot more understanding.
08/27/03 Standing there, trying not to look too closely at the pair of panties I was being exhorted to examine while giving the appearance of keenly observing, I was assailed by a thought: I am the den mother to The Crazy Scouts.
The panties had a crusty something on them, which I was being informed was, in fact, semen, versus any of the many things that could have crust on them. I was trying not to look to indecisive, while still indicating horror, lest I have the offending underwear shoved under my nose to smell the difference. Honestly, I should never have walked in the front door.
After an evening with my father, eating his food, watching his cable television, and happily digging through his food supplies to see if there was anything worth eating, I'd gone to the store. At the store, I'd found ramen on sale (staple food of the poor), and got a shopping bag full for a couple dollars, as well as buy-one-get-one-free oatmeal with multiple fruity flavors in each box. In particular, I was looking forward to trying the banana oatmeal, as I'd never heard of such a thing before. All in all, I was in a good mood when I came home.
Then, I saw Nikki standing in the living room next to a couple suitcases. When I understandably asked what the suitcases, I was shushed and told in a low voice that he was leaving Tassy. Nikki was convinced that A) she didn't love him; B) she was cheating on him; and C) she was spending her hard-earned money to do drugs. At this point, Tassy woke up to discover this scene -- she was understandably pissed off. Arguing went back and forth, and it was quite apparent to me that it didn't matter what she said, because Nikki was never going to trust her.
My attempts to calm the situation down were derailed when Nikki reached into the top of one of the cupboards and pulled out his "proof" -- the dirty underwear. After being subjected to this, I spent a couple hours just sitting on the couch, smoking, while Nikki went psycho and Tassy cried on the phone to her sister. When I went to bed, it looked like Nikki was leaving, Tassy had finally realized what a paranoid, jealous psycho he was, and I was honestly just hoping he'd go through with it.
Of course, it didn't work out like that. I woke up to find that Nikki had claimed lack of sleep had led to his attempt to leave her, Tassy had accepted this (for the third or fourth time: I've honestly lost track), and all was as right as it gets with the Crazy Scouts. They'd also decided against having an abortion, because second-trimester abortions are expensive, and they didn't have the cash on hand. Questions about how they planned to afford the resulting child and the expenses involved in that are being summarily ignored.
When I was in elementary school, there was a series of books called The Stupids. These people came to unimaginably idiotic conclusions to the mysteries of life (such as "why is it suddenly dark?"), and based all their decisions on this brand of stupidity.
I realized that Nikki and Tassie are The Stupids.
************************************** We dealt with the hurricane by throwing a drunken party. I called my dad, asked him what booze he had, and drove over during the first hours of the storm to pick it up. Brent and I got really drunk, Dirk only mildly drunk, and at one point I yelled "Happy Hurricane" to a guy passing our balcony.
We lost power early, about six p.m. the night of the storm, got it back for an hour at eleven, then lost it again until noon the next day. Candles burned all over the place, and it was very much like "The Others".
All in all, for me, it was two days off, a drunken party, and the minor irritation of no electric power. Considering the fact that there was no food in the refridgerator to go bad, I think we got off light.