MY LIFE - OCTOBER

Sunday, October 29, 2000

So tomorrow is my birthday. I guess I've made that point pretty clear for the last several days now. I will be turning 20 and have been thinking about the way my life has been so far. I don't think I'd change how it's gone, even though it's been pretty hairy at times. I don't think I'd like to have those bad times gone because they helped shape me. They helped me define what I could be.

Without them, I'm probably just your everyday spoiled kid who's had anything and everything handed to me when I've wanted it. I'm not though. I haven't had it easy and I no that life isn't always a cake walk. I'm glad that things happened the way they happened. My life would not be the same. There's no doubt in my mind that I would be a different person, probably not as nice, if my life weren't the way it was.

One thing that always amazes people about me is how I'm not a nasty person, how I didn't turn into some outcast of society. People always seemed to expect that would be the result. My shyness, my strange sense of humor both tend to make people think that what I went through wasn't as bad as it sounded. I've had people tell me it must not have been that bad.

They don't realize how wrong they are until I tell them what happened, all with a straight face, all with exact facts. I have not made anything up that's happened to me. What I may have told you is exactly what happened. If anything, I've been unable to describe just how much things scared me because it's hard to put into words what you feel when things are as bad as they were.

I made it through though. I'm a strange person because of it. I wish that I had a slightly different sense of humor sometimes, that I could say funny things all the time. I don't have that sense of humor though. I take situations that I see and twist them. I take things people say and turn them into something else. I take someone's mistake and turn it into a laugh. My humor is dependant on the situation and what people say to me. I can't just make something up and be funny saying it.

My sense of humor, my shyness, and everything else have carried me through my life so far. I don't expect that to change anytime soon. I just don't have it in me to be completely mean.

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How is it that I have two cats who shed more than the other eight cats combined? I go downstairs and don't see a whole lot of fur lying around and they vacuum less than I do. Then I walk upstairs and there are clumps of white and gray fur all over the place. Just what is the deal? I knew my cat shed a lot, but she's absurd with the amount of shedding she does. It's 50° outside and she's shedding.

Morgue isn't that bad, except for the last two weeks where he's been shedding too. The fur gets everywhere too. I've found fur in places I didn't know it could go, like on top of my dresser. How did it get up there? The carpet, which is green, usually has several clumps of fur that make it appear much lighter in color than it actually is. I vacuum and two days later it looks like it did before I vacuum.

My bed isn't much better. I washed my blankets and two days later they looked lighter in color again as there was fur, white and grey, all over the placae. My blanket looked like a very pale shade of blue. My blanket, when clean, is a very dark blue. There's sometimes that much fur on it. They just sleep on it so much that it doesn't take long for it to get covered again. Both of them are on my blanket right now.

It wasn't so bad until recently though. Usually, both Kisa and Morgue sleep on the end of the bed, keeping most of the fur down at that end. However, Morgue has been sleeping right at the base of my pillows for about two weeks now. This also wouldn't be so bad except that for the last week or so, he's been shedding as well. So now there's fur starting to build up on both ends and in the middle where Morgue usually sleeps.

Washing them isn't going to help. If I washed my blankets everytime they were covered in fur, I'd be doing laundry four times a week. That's a waste of time and laundry detergent. So I just have to deal with it until a couple weeks pass and I feel it absolutely necessary to clean them. Then I might as well do the sheets since it'll save me from doing them a week later.

The litter boxes are the best though. I have two, one in my bathroom and one between the two sets of stairs that lead to my room. I had just filled the one in the bathroom with some extra litter when I heard one of the cats kicking litter all over the place. I walked into the bathroom and saw Morgue just kicking all the fresh litter out of the pan and onto the floor next to the box.

The little shit did it on purpose. I know this because he didn't even use the damn thing. He just liked kicking the litter out of the box. He seems to enjoy doing this just because he knows I just put litter in it. If the litter's been in there for a while, he doesn't kick it around. Anything fresh gets kicked out. It's almost funny, except that I have to then sweep it up.

I don't like sweeping it up. It tends to send a cloud of dust flying in the air, right into my face, causing me either to sneeze or cough, sometimes dropping the litter right back out of the dustpan and onto the floor. It's not a pleasant experience for me to deal with.

But I love my cats. They keep me warm in the winter and are generally friendly. Except when Morgue's biting feet. Don't even ask me what that's about because I haven't figured it out yet.

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I'm off tomorrow, then I work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday during my last week at my current store. Wednesday I have to call Steve at Berea and get a schedule started so that I know when I'm working next week, then Thursday I have to stop by and see if there are any problems that I might have. Right now, I don't think there's going to be much of a problem with my schedule, but things have been known to come up.

For the most part, I'll be working in the middle of the day, anywhere from 10-12 to 6-8 and sometimes even working a midnight shift. I agreed to it even though I probably won't be too fond of a midnight shift. I also told Steve that I didn't have a problem working Sunday, especially if it gives me the occasional Saturday off. This despite the fact that I have never really worked on Sunday on a regular basis.

I told him that when I go back to school, it'll probably be during the morning and early part of the day, which he thought would work best since he doesn't need help in the morning and would have a hard time fitting me in there. So when I go back to school, I'll probably start off early in the day, come home for a brief while, then head on over to the store to work a late afternoon-evening type shift.

I told him that I ultimately wasn't going to be picky about when I worked and when I was off, just as long as I don't have anything going on. If I need a day off, I'm not going to bullshit him. I'm taking it off and he can work around it. But other than something like that, I'm not going to be making an issue out of the schedule. When he wants me to work, I'll work. I'm not going over there to be a problem.

I'll just wait and see how the schedule works out though. For the first part of the week though, my schedule is unknown for next week. When I find out, I'll post it in Updates like I've been doing.

This should definitely be interesting though. I'm looking forward to it.