Okay, now I'm miserable.

I get to be miserable for a while, right? I thought I loved this guy. I thought he cared about me. It took me four years to get over DTD to the point where I could let anyone else in at all. So, I get to be misrable and cry now right?

I am honestly humbled...

...by the truly wonderful people I am fortunate enough to have in my life. Today could have been a really awful day. I'm out two hundred bucks. Well, okay, I canceled the ticket so I think with the change fee and orbitz fee I have like $50 left to use on a Northwest ticket before December 27th. I'm humiliated that someone I truly cared about cared so little about me that ultimately he didn't even want to see me again. I'm heartbroken that someone who so briefly meant so very, very much to me is suddenly out of my life. I will miss him. I'm depressed that for a few days I thought I was going on this wonderful weekend adventure and now I am going to spend the weekend here, sleeping, reading, eating ice cream. Lots and LOTS of ice cream. So, today could have been really awful. It wasn't. I went and walked dogs. And every client? Every single client of mine did something nice for the trip I am not going on. Two clients paid me for this week and next week and left little notes saying they hoped I had a great time and they just wanted to make sure I had pocket money for NY. One client fixed me this absolutely incredible lunch. Two clients hugged me and told me how sorry they were that I wasn't going. My brother stayed up on the phone with me last night and let me vent. Team CC has called and sent supportive (and funny) emails.

So, today sucks a little. But I am so lucky to have people around me to remind me that I deserve someone in my life who wants me for me.

I hate everyone

And apparently the feeling is reciprocated. Not that I give a fuck. My feeling at the moment is that everyone on the planet can go straight to hell. I'm sick that I bought this stupid fucking plane ticket. I don't actually want to go to NY. I don't know why I would go there to see someone who keeps consistently showing me through word and deed that he doesn't truly care about me. I certainly don't want to see the goddamned parrots fly in the goddamned park so that he can bump his ego up further.

I cut half my goddamned hair off because he made a snarky comment about it. A good six inches (no that's not a goddamned euphemism!) The stylist was like, "are you SURE you want to do this?!?" NO! What I want is a goddamned, fucking boyfriend who can say nice things to me. Tell me I'm fucking pretty. Would it fucking kill you???

And STOP fucking saying that you're sorry for not saying anything nice to me and not communicating reasonably with me and not being supportive. Either get it together to do those things or stop pretending that you're capable of it.

I don't want to hear that my hair looks scraggly. I don't want to hear that I need to lose twenty pounds. I don't want to hear that I should take antidepressants. Let's see, do we ALL think that maybe I've heard enough of that kind of shit to last a goddamned lifetime? 'Cause I do.

I told you all this was gonna suck. Kettle???

This is good...

...I won't have time to obsess and freak out! Bought the ticket ($199) this morning. 'Course I had to sell my soul to DTD so he would board the mutts for me while I'm in the big city but it'll be worth it, right? New York, Central Park, getting to see Otis (& Gizmo) fly, sex...it'll be worth it....right?

Sorry...

...about posting an "I'm miserable" kind of thing and then disappearing. I'm okay but I am realizing that when I don't feel like I am getting any positive attention I lavish it on the person I would like to be getting it from which doesn't seem to be working so well.

I was considering going to the big city this weekend but I dunno.

WTF is it with me....

...and people who think I need to change every blessed thing about myself while they're freakin' perfect?

Not going into too much detail 'cause I'm the idiot who can't keep an anonymous blog anonymous but seriously I'm more than a little sick of it and starting to feel like the only thing really wrong with me is that I am willing to admit that I have faults and failings and that I work so fucking hard all the fucking time to try to please people by changing whatever fault or failing they're focused on right at that moment and that I somehow get entangled with people who not only think they know everything about everything but who can't give any positive reinforcement to save their sorry asses.

Whew.

This is how I spent my day. Thoughts?

Long time no see

I would apologize for the lack of blogging but that is in the top ten on the list of things not to blog about.

Anthony and Ms. A.R. are correct in that the lack of blogging is because there is so much going on in my real life. Imagine that, I have a real life!

Things are unfortunately stalled with CPG for the time being. We still talk a lot but airfare has doubled since he was here for his visit. My turn to shell out money to visit him and I just don't have it.

The dogblog is also stalled, not because the house is too messy but because I have three sites I am currently working on and get this, two of them are things I'll get paid for.

I've continued taking the bird to the Arboretum. We had a lot of fun last weekend. There were a ton of people there and they all wanted to meet her. Tons of photos on the bird's blog.

I've had a lot of trouble with this Lexapro. I was terribly, terribly lightheaded and dizzy on 10mg so we cut it back to 5 for a week. Today I go back to 10, we'll see if it works or not.

So, things are going pretty darn well :-)

All the news

You know I always post photos where I'm not exactly clear or in focus. I love this photo from our flight on Sunday because I can count on one hand the number of photos anyone has ever taken where I am smiling naturally and that is a completely natural smile. An unguarded moment.

I was just so thrilled with my little, green bird. I've written the story over and over. I just can't write it again here but you can read it and see photos of the actual flight on the bird's blog.

That little bird really has completely changed my life. Birds are often recommended as pets for the elderly/lonely/depressed. I don't think just the beauty of a bird would have affected me this way but I highly recommend learning to train a flighted parrot as therapy.

Quite a while ago Jessica, fellow MSer and bird owner, posted about the potential benefits of SSRIs prolonging mobility in people with MS. CPG has been on me practically from our first conversation that life would be just a little easier for me if I took something to kind of even things out a bit. He's also the reason that I had to go to the doctor anyway since I needed a new prescription for birth control so while I was there I took the plunge and got my doc to write me a prescription for Lexapro which I started taking this morning. We'll see. I took Prozac when I first got sick and I couldn't tolerate it at all. I couldn't focus. I couldn't sleep. And, every time I told my doctor that I was having trouble with it she raised the dosage until I just quit taking it and quit complaining about it. So, we'll see.

My current focus is on getting enough money together to get up to the big city to see CPG's birds fly in the park before it gets too cold for them to be out. Unfortunately planes need gas to fly and with gas prices...plus Bubba broke down on me last Friday and while he seems okay now it did dip into my NYC fund to get him back on the road...plus doctors and prescriptions cost money too.

So, my life is pretty full right now. And, mostly full with pretty good things to the point where I'm disinclined to dwell on the less good things. Oh, and I'm totally BTD's teacher's pet again ;-)

I think I might puke.

I'm taking the bird out in a little while to a local Arboretum to do her first official free flight. This has, ironically, created tons and tons of controversy on the email lists which exist specifically to discuss free flying one's birds outside. You would *think* that would be a perfetly safe place to discuss this sort of thing but oh well.

It is now the job of one tiny (64 grams!), green bird to create a whole new meaning for this particular date.

I plan to audblog from the field regardless of whether the experiment is a success or failure.

I'm at least as nervous as I used to be about agility trials. Ok, a lot more 'cause the worst that can happen at an agility trial is you flunk. The worst that could happen with this is that I could never see her again or she could get eaten by a hawk or...

Jeezus.

I'm still alive.

Things are pretty status quo. Just crazy busy. Tons of PS.

I fired a client this morning. Remember the S cat with the alarm that always goes off? She sent me an email saying, and I quote, that she refused to be held hostage by my policy that unless the client calls me to tell me they have returned from their trip I will return to make another visit on the same schedule. I always leave the call-by time on the note with the final bill. This is a completely industry standard policy and exists so that if the client is killed in a plane crash or stranded the animal continues to receive care so it doesn't work to rely on the person only calling you if they are unable to make it home on time because they can't exactly call and tell you that they were murdered.

I always explain this at the preliminary visit. I refer to it as the eaten by bears clause because that way you don't have to discuss more realistic things like planes crashing and such. Once I explain the concept to the client they are universally all in favor of it and I allow people to leave we're home messages on my voicemail in the middle of the night so they don't have to worry about waking up before 8 a.m. to get a message to me before I return to make the emergency visit.

She actually got really nasty about it in the way that people do when they can hide behind email and don't have to have a face to face confrontation. I make about twenty bucks every couple of months off of the cat and he's still grandfathered at the old rate so even if I did keep her as a client I was already planning on bumping all those clients to the current rates starting September 15 because of gas costs so it's hardly any big loss.

E sent another jrt pup to me for some work.

CPG took his second bird, a rehome, out for his first free flight in the park. I'm helping him put together a website with photos of his birds in the park. Currently it is only a placeholder page but it should be cool when we get it done. It's not completely unlike the DB really. Which I should get back to getting set up. It has pretty much fallen by the wayside.

I think I might take my bird out for her first intentional free flight on Saturday.

Otherwise, the turtle is fine; the dogs are fine; the bird is fine; I'm fine; CPG is fine; my mother is only mildly harassing me; the gas hike is killing my visit CPG in the big city fund; I have a *gasp* doctor's appointment on Monday.

It's Sunday and I'm not wasn't upset about it.

You know how normally I hate Sundays? Well, my house is not only reasonably neat and tidy but the bird is entertaining herself on the curtain rod. And look at those gorgeous blue flight feathers beginning to loosen and moult on her wings so she can grow a whole new unclipped set!

My brother named the turtle after the main character in this book to commemorate New Orleans as it was. I was thinking about why the turtle we had as a child, also named by G, stuck around the way that he did and I came to the conclusion that a) he was originally a pet store turtle that someone had dumped outside so he was already in the habit of looking to people for food and b) we kept him in the house that first winter. So, I decided I can be a house turtle for the winter. I fixed him some stations around the house so he can hide from the dogs and bought him a fullspectrum sun light (also good for the bird), a bin full of cypress mulch and some fat, juicy nightcrawlers.



And the dogs, what do they think about all of this? They seem content just to have the couch/bed to lie on in the living room.

I told CPG last night that we didn't need so much to figure out which city to live in as we need to find a nice zoo to buy.

And how are things going on that front? I'm not really sure. Okay, I think. I mean, I still very much feel the same way. It's just complicated with the two cities and we can hardly keep up the pace we had going before. We still talk every day. We're just in another holding pattern until I manage to go visit him in the big city and it sucks. If we didn't live so far apart we could hang out and read the paper and be horified about the devastation in New Orleans and how just absolutely dreadfully this administration has been in its response to it and how desperately unfair it is that the head moron gets to appoint not one but TWO new justices. And we could make a harness for the bird, feed the turtle some worms and play frisbee with the dogs and I would make bacon and pancakes.

Instead, I don't know what his plans for the day are. I was feeling bouyant until I typed that last paragraph. I had decided not to blog about Katrina or Renquist. There are so many other bloggers who do it so much better there really seems no point for me to step outside of my frivolous, self-absorbed blox.

We knew it was bound to happen, right?

It's not Aesop. It's a he for one thing. Mother found him about to be hit by a car. We've decided that G can name him. He's only in the baby pool while I shore up the turtle enclosure. This is good though, CPG might not have to fullfill the Galapogus Tortoise promise. I'm quite delighted with just a Common Eastern Box Turtle. Really, ridiculously delighted. He's very alert and active. I heart turtles. I can do this this time. It won't be another Aesop. I'm going to get him some earthworms today.

This, that and...

First, everyone go wish Anthony a happy birthday! It's his day so don't leave mean, liberal comments, k?

Second, I sent Xingtone an email about using their software to get the bird back home. I was kind of angling for a free software upgrade or a t-shirt or something but they want to send out a press release about it!

The other, DTD tried to fuck with my life yesterday. I sent a client to him. I walk other dogs for this client every day. She's a sweetheart. DTD appears to be running up her bill just because she could potentially afford it and because it puts me in a difficult position which just makes him happy I guess. I called him to discuss it yesterday morning and he had someone with him so took the opportunity to run me down to the other person while I was on the phone with him so I could listen in. What a charmer. My first instinct was to try calling him later to discuss it with him when no one else was there or to email him saying that I really do not appreciate him treating me this way.

Then I thought about it. My life is going so well.

1. A really fantastic guy who I really, really like a lot seems to feel the same way about me.
2. Business is good. I have great clients who genuinely appreciate me.
3. My bird flew to me from 50' up outside.
4. I might wind up in the local paper or on the news for my attempt to train the bird to free fly outside.
5. My health is stable.

So, life is good. Why the FUCK should I let DTD's repulsive negativity back into my life? I decided there was no reason I should. He's a sad man. Incapable of adult relationships. No offense to a blogger who is dear to my heart, but, all DTD cares about is power and control. Oddly both he and BTD are into Maslow's heirarchy. Odd because I think both of them believe they are high on the scale when actually they are still stuck in the lower levels.