katyism

I am about to type up some more teenage diary entries because I'm in an extremely odd state of mind in addition to boredom and caffeine. That description does not do my mood any justice; I'll just say I've had an odd night despite nothing happening, and that layering emotions and spacey thoughts on top of each other, without anything physical to do or concentrate on (not even TV or the internet proper), has led me to introspect extrovertedly... in a way opposite the way I normally come to this sort of mood.

TLDR: The next few entries you see will be over 10 years old. I am bored, so I'm coming back to my diary-transcription project like I do every year or so.

Kitz is gone.

So, I borrowed a car and took Kitz to his vet and after some deliberation and embarassment and medicalness, checked him in for the weekend or longer.

I'd go into how I can't afford for him to be there more than 3 days though the vet recommends 7, or how the boyfriend has waffled between abusive and sympathetic means of dealing with this, or how sudden it was or how guilty I feel, but I've typed so much already and I'm tired. Really tired.

I can't believe I laughed or had any fun tonight. I think I did but alchohol and denial and whatnot, you know. Nothing like sneaking a flask into an all-ages club, but only to find that i had only gone to see a band that sings songs about dead pets and empty nest daughters, and everyone but me thinks the song was funny.

I'm going to the vet anyway to see what we can see.

Over the last 6 weeks or so, my cat's health has deteriorated. It became obvious that he has gone completely deaf. Then, he started being picky about food, and lost a lot of weight. I made plans to take him to see the vet, but then I lost my job (they found out about my credit card theft misdemeanor) at the beginning of this month. ( this is long )

Edited to add: Kitz managed to eat three cat treats just now. It took like five minutes. I had to keep dropping them in front of his face, and then he'd go after them. He wouldn't eat them if I just set them down. He wouldn't eat the whole handful of them, though. He also is chewing them oddly (they are soft moist treats) as if it's painful.

Also, I don't deserve anyone's charity. I'm such a horrible person with my own past of stealing and lying, that I don't even deserve the nice things that have already been done for me. I think what is happening with Kitz is the final, ultimate payment for what a horrible person I've been and what a miserable failure at everything I turned out to be. It's like the universe has thrown all these bad things at me before, that I managed to get through... all the homelessness and brokeness and unemployment and depression and suddenly moving and the breakups and just all of it... and said "well, take THIS, Katy, I warned you. I'll take away the only person who truly loves you and make you watch him suffer first. Then you'll have what you deserve and we'll be even." But why would the universe make another person, Kitz, suffer, just to teach me this lesson? I just don't know, and it isn't fair to him.

I just lost my job today.

I'm supposed to take a 200mg tablet of Bupropion twice a day. I've been kind of bad at remembering to do it. On days when I know I forgot to take the pill in the morning, I'll take my usual evening pill, and then spend some time second-guessing myself and/or going over my boring memories to see if something triggers a specific memory of having taken the 2nd pill of the day.

On rare occasions this results in me taking one or two more pills in the day than I should have. Today might have been one of those days. I didn't take one this morning, but I *think* I took my usual evening pill. I have this whole system of moving the pill bottle to various parts of my desk to indicate whether and when I took it. Sometimes I don't follow the system. That's helpful (sarcasm!).

So I either took only one today in the evening, or two within an hour of each other because I couldn't remember taking the usual evening one. But now, I can tell. At this late hour, I have:

-bleached, sponged, and pressure-washed every removable part of the refrigerator
-bleached and sponged the interior of the refrigerator
-experimented on how to chill beer with salt water and ice
-mopped the kitchen three times
-cleaned kitchen counters three or four times
-cleaned the microwave
-cleaned the pantry and fridge (threw out spoiled items that belong to housemates.. so what if they yell at me?)
-went through the communal storage areas and found useful items such as an iron, ironing board, surge protectors and power strips, and cosmetic items like lotion and dental floss
-cleaned the basement sink
-did four loads of laundry
-did three loads of dishes
-mopped the kitchen a lot (still need to do more)
-umm... a lot of other things that were based on storage, organization, and reduction of clutter
-a lot of other cleaning type things
-rearranged the placement of things in the kitchen, several times

This is what this drug is good for... productivity. Sometimes, so much productivity that it prevents me from doing things I actually needed to do.

So yeah, the point is, I think I actually did take too many pills today. I think I need one of those 7-day pill boxes that have compartments for the day of the week. Will have to pick one up in the elderly-person section of the supermarket. Yay!

My boyfriend was or still is working on developing such a pill box for Alzheimer's patients. It would have wireless networking capabilities so that it would monitor, and if necessary, remind the Alzheimer's patient's family/caretakers that the person didn't or did take their medications on time. I think I will poke my boyfriend to actually implement the idea. The contest he's entering will require it anyway.

A while back, someone told me that a local person maintains a website where they programmed a handy route finder application for Bloomington Transit and IU buses. I also heard that a programming class gives an assignment to students to make something like this. I've never been able to find such a thing. Does anyone know if the legend is true?

Meh, I totally posted this in the wrong place. I'll leave it here for posterity. ( Read more... )

I sat on my bed in the dark, with an office-sized paper shredder in my arms and an empty gallon milk jug. I flattened the jug as best I could, and attempted to feed it into the shredder. It occurred to me just then that it wasn't just a lengthwise shredder. It was a cross-cut shredder, and had more work to do on the plastic than I'd initially realized. But I was a little relieved, because it mean my shredded documents would be more secure. And my milk bottles, too, apparently.

It took several attempts, during which the feed mechanism jammed and I repeatedly had to do the "reverse feed direction, pull, then switch to forward feed and push" move. Finally the bottle was completely shredded to my satisfaction in the shredder's attached waste bin.

Then I noticed that there were more shreds, on my bedroom floor. Shreds of white paper, it appeared. I got up to investigated and followed this shredded "paper trail" all the way to my bathroom, still virtually in the dark. Along the way I realized that they were shreds of soft tissue paper, with the telltale edges that always mean a cat has had jolly fun shredding your toilet paper roll while you're gone. As I entered the bathroom to verify, I made a mental note to find the cat and lecture or scold him.

But the white paper shreds were no longer under my feet; I couldn't see or feel them anymore. Instead, somewhere near a bathmat, I stepped into a pool of warm liquid. In the dim light, I could see that dark pools had formed in various places on the floor. I heard the sound of dripping. A leak of some kind? But the liquid was too dark to be water. I turned on the light.

I was standing in a pool of blood. It was all around me, pooling, dripping consistently and rhythmically from various cracks in the cieling. I remembered that my mother's bedroom was upstairs, directly above me. I raced upstairs.

I found her sitting up in bed, covered in bloody bed linens and nightclothes. A man was asleep beside her. "It's my brother!" she weeped quietly. I saw the open gashes, bruises, and bite marks on her. "He was raping me. Hurting me! Shhh, don't wake him up. He'll get you."

It was daylight now. The man rose from the bed, yawned, stretched, and smiled at me. At that point, my mother faded from the scene. Perhaps she went unconscious, died, or just disappeared under the now-bloodless blankets into another dimension. At any rate, she was no longer in the room, and I was alone with my uncle.

I knew that he'd attempt to hurt me if I panicked or tried to find a phone to call the police. I had to get out of there and find help somewhere else without raising any suspicion in him that I knew about his evil deeds.

We went about a usual sort of morning routine, making breakfast and conversation. I distracted him with what turned out, surprisingly, to be an intelligent and mutually engaging conversation about the advantages of direct marketing. I was having a good morning and almost forgot how afraid I was. But I remembered, and drew the conversation to an end as I looked for my combat boots. As I nonchalantly put them on, my uncle seemed to realize that I was about to go out to seek help. He moved ominously toward me while I was pulling on the second boot.

Then I woke up.

( the facts )

O heaven help me, I have been dispensing random but not-so-random advice to not-so-close friends about relationships the very possibility of which I was not even aware of.

Poor guy. He took my words to heart.

Poor guy for even listening to me, sage that I may be.

Sage wisdom, rosemary wisdom, thyme wisdom. Parsley is a bit strong of a descriptor (in its own weak way) so we will dispense with that.

Lines and dotted lines and lines between the states of dotted and solid... which nobody actually believes I draw, but I do. I keep it all.

Thank you for the ride home. I wish for you what you deserve. I don't think you'll get it from those you speak of, but false hope counts for something in the absence of any real thing. You'll learn. She'll figure it out, and so will the other she, and by token so will you. What one deserves, according to me, is not the most positive sentiment, but I will posit that it is meaningful in its very lack of negativity. Those who know me or try will understand my humanitarian efforts here, despite my evil words.

Welcome to Katyland 2.0!

Actually fuck. It's more like 7.5.3 or some shit

Wait, this isn't about versions. This isn't about me, except that it is about me, only in the way that "about me" is a concept that can only be summarized, vaguely, by me not writing about me. Me noting the features of others and noting how similar and different they are from my own. How open source we all are, if only the source and all the if-thens and grammatical clauses and logical dependencies had been defined....

And they are all defined, but not in a language that someone wrote for the future to read and modify and distribute and capitlize upon. Instead, in a language that was not written but created and evolved and only much later studied. Linguists and scientists, statisticians and philosophers, creationists and zealots, they are all one and the same and startlingly different. Defined, being defined, the definitions of how to define them being defined as we speak, before we spoke, before we were born, after we die, the definitions will never be definite. Definity is as fabricated as the very nature of our exchange of ideas.

Yep, that last sentence was some indefinable undertaking of the statements that can be universally and inaccurately not tactful and unfactful and intrinsically true and natural and debatable as anything any tool-using concept-wrangling humanoid has ever attempted.

Attempts are what we are. Failed, succeeded, indeterminate attempts. Chance and circumstance; pomp and podiums and popularity; sidelines and sideways and straightaway; wrong way and one way and two way; multi-lane and multi-blame; we are.

Emotions, logic. Many, few, one. Good, bad. Right, wrong. Here, there. Near, far. Har, har har. Bert, Ernie. Rubber duckie. Mother fucked me. Others duped me. The force is with me. Except it's the prime directive. Really, what is the missive there? Borg or worms or microbes or Bynars? Gorn or Romulan ale or both? Devices versus efort? Convenience versus principle?

Or perhaps Bert versus Oscar. Gene Roddenberry was onto something, albeit simplistic. One of these comparisons is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you guess which one?

Oh well....
I tried.



Kinda.

OK, now that I have health insurance I need to namea primary care provider. The four doctors in my insurance network that are taking new patients and close-ish to my office are below. My boss and Google have already told me some stuff about them (in parentheses):

Mary Mahern (Democrat, GLBT friendly, practices alongside gynecologist husband, said to be bitchy to her staff but was nice to my boss, as a patient)

John B. O'Donnell (really close to campus, my boss says there was a scandal when he was known as J. Brian O'Donnell wherein his staff improparly disopsed of unshredded patient files with confidential info in them, wtf?)

Cliff Mitcheff & Winford Erwin (Share a practice, are young/out of med school in the last few years, the clinic has extended hours and is walk-in only, no appointments)

Anybody else got anything to say (or please resolve these rumors my chatty boss passed on!) about these doctors or their practice to help me decide who to go with?

I felt the compulsion to make a list. I love lists. Here is a list of plays and musicals I have seen live on stage. No particular order. Awesome ones bold!

Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS - Saenger Theatre, New Orleans - some American troupe
Pirates of Penzance - somewhere on the coast, perhaps Jeff Davis Community College - some high school's drama club
Belle of Amherst - somewhere in northwest Mississippi, Greenville or Columbus? - some high school's drama club
A Midsummer Night's dream - University of Southern Mississippi - some high school's...well, you get the picture.
Romeo and Juliet - No idea, but I am sure I have seen this live on stage by high school students at least twice.
The Cask of Amontillado - MSMS class of 97 or 98 in that stupid auditorium place thingy
The Telltale Heart - see above
Bertholt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle - Our Lady Academy drama club, Our Lady of the Gulf Church community center (I was in it, that totally counts)
Kurt Weill/Berthold Brecht's Threepenny Opera - Loyola or Tulane, some auditorium on some campus in New Orleans
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged: a comedy) - Bay St. Louis Little Theatre (I was Ophelia! it counts)
Auntie Mame - Bay St. Louis Little Theater (I was a stagehand/costume assistant! Helping my friends' mothers change clothes! Awesome!)
Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth - somewhere on a field trip in Mississippi. Thanks Carl Butler, I have no idea what town we were in. One of those ones that starts with G.
Thornton Wilder's Our Town - Buskirk Chumley Theatre, Bloomington IN. Blah.
I'm sure there are more, fuck.

Also... does anyone know how to remove a stripped hex screw? The socket is practically a circle now because I don't own any real tools and messed it up. I don't own a drill and can't drill it out.

Why didn't Jem and the Holograms ever just get a restraint order against the Misfits?

I don't have any Xmas plans. Who's gonna be in town?

Kitz on ICHC:

I started a gasoline fire on purpose! Yay!