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2004-05-12 - 10:46 a.m.
Oh, I feel terrible. My cat Smitten has this really really awful disgusting burst abscess on his neck. It would have been a normal, really awful disgusting burst abscess on his neck had he NOT decided to scratch incessantly at it. But he did and now it is really, really, really, really awful. And there isn�t much that can be about it but let it heal slowly while he is on his medication and I am twice daily washing it with peroxide and putting this cream down into the middle of the really, really, really disgusting torn and bloody skin hole he has there. My cat Smitten is one of two of my cats that HAS to go outside. He gets all neurotic/depressed when he can�t go out. He has gone through every single screen in my house while escaping in the middle of the night. And he will spend all day scratching at my metal doors thinking he will eventually get through and be free. Anyway, since he has this THING on his neck I cannot let him out. But I can�t very well keep all the cats inside because that would just be mean to all of them. So this morning I opened the door and let four of them out and held my foot in front of him preventing him from going too. Now he is sitting on the floor next to my chair staring at me and meowing a really pathetic and sad meow. I feel really bad. I�m in the midst of another car related dilemma. My car, my car that absolutely hates me and needs to get away from me with all its bad car-ma, has sprouted a gas leak or ten in addition to its presently unsolved other problem of burning oil and leaving clouds of smoke across my town. I had intended to buy a different car as soon as possible, I just needed THAT car to last for a few weeks, to just get me to work for a few weeks until I could gather enough money to buy something halfway decent. It gave me four days. Not even that because the gas leak showed its face on my way to work that first day back. So I am looking, but not as hard as I should be because I don�t yet have as much money as I had wanted to buy a car with. Right now I am looking at $500 cars. Next week I can look at $1000 cars. The week after that I could look at $2000 cars. But�I NEED a car NOW, not in two weeks, NOW. That�s why yesterday my mother and I drove 120 miles roundtrip to Lansing to look at a car. A $500 car. I had called the guy and told him I was going to be coming quite a distance and was it worth it. My question had been, �I just need to know if there is anything immediately wrong with the car, something that will prevent me from getting it home?� He said, �Oh no, this is a GREAT car, it starts right up, drives great and the man who traded it in drove it to work sixty miles away every day until the day he traded it in.� I wasn�t expecting much, it was a $500 car after all. But�I did expect him NOT to lie to me about being able to get it home. When my mother and I finally arrived there I didn�t even need to get out of the car before I knew that it was totally NOT going to make it back to Kalamazoo. The whole driver�s side was Bondo, the front tires were bald and almost totally flat and when I peered under the car and felt the frame it crumbled in my hand. Fucker. So we turned around and came home. In my mind I was thinking that surely there was a reason we had driven there, like maybe there was going to be �THE� car sitting on the side of the road for sale or something. But there never was. I am one of those people that believe there is a reason for everything. Like yesterday when I went to drive to work and realized that way more gas than usual was pouring out of the leak and I would have to find someone to come and get me and was an hour late for work, I kept thinking to myself, �It�s okay, the reason this is happening is maybe because this morning you were going to hit a deer on the way to work, or because someone was going to pull out in front of you and there would have been an accident.� I am a big fate believer. In some ways it makes problems for me�I am rather inflexible when it comes to something already planned because I fear messing up fate. Usually if I am scheduled for a certain shift at work I will not change it. I get nervous. But in a lot of ways my belief in fate is good because it helps me through a lot of things. Like when my car dies. I don�t freak out very much. I just resign myself to the fact that fate was working. So it was really hard for me to stomach yesterday when I got home and realized that driving to Lansing and back had been a complete waste of time. That there had been absolutely no reason for it. None. We probably should have gone to the International Bulk Foods Store while we were there because at least then we would have had a reason for being there. It�s funny because when I talked to my mom later that night she echoed my thoughts about going to Lansing for no reason. She couldn�t believe that it was a complete waste of time. My mother and I need reasons for things apparently. Anyway. Then I was sitting here and my Dad called. This was odd enough itself because my dad never calls unless I have called him and left a minimum of 5 messages first. He said, �Whippy! It�s your dad, I have some people here that want to talk to you.� And then he puts his children on the phone. I appreciate that. His kids ARE the cutest little fuckers you will EVER see and they are also the SMARTEST three years old EVER (I�m serious too, these kids are like poster children for the perfect child. But at the same time I don�t really think it is healthy for any of us to have Anna say �I love you Whipser and you are my best friend.� Because I have only ever spent MAYBE a total of ten hours with these children in their lives and while they can realistically say I am their sister, I am also 27 years older than them, live 1300 miles away and have NOTHING to do with any part of their life. And then my dad gets back on the phone and is asking me about Eric, about my trip, about my plans for the future and I am trying not to tell him that I am destitute, freaking out, anxiety ridden and morbidly depressed, I am, as usual, trying to be some fake apparition of myself. I am trying to be some stable, happy, successful daughter because still, after 30 years, I need my dad to be proud of me. And it is a lie. I hate that with my father I am fake. I hate that he is such a fucker that he put this shield up. I remember a lot of years ago when my brother and I were in Colorado visiting my dad and his wife how I found it really strange that I couldn�t even swear in front of my dad because I felt all weird. Because our relationship dwindled to a state of being unfamiliar. I am a guest in his house. It�s so different with my mother. My mother knows all of our weaknesses, she knows our problems, she knows US. She knows us as real people and in turn we can be REAL people. My dad just knows as something from his past. Something that he will have to deal with in the future because he WAS a REALLY good dad to us, before he decided to skate with his 20 year old cashier from the grocery store. Now he is the WORST father in the world. It was interesting because he was telling me stories about his kids and he would say, �The other day Whisper did this�.� He was calling his daughter Anna by my name. The third time he did it his wife screamed impatiently and desperately, �ANNA, Mike, it is ANNA!� See, normally when a parent calls his child by his other child�s name it is funny. My mom does it all the time. But when my dad does that it causes me to automatically smile a knowing smile and for his wife to freak out. Because there is an issue there. I know that he knows that he totally fucked me over. And I know that SHE knows that he totally fucked me over but she tries to keep him from remembering that. I really hate her. There is this battle between the two of us. And the funny thing is that I am sure I could have won it, I almost think I still could. But I am not going to because I don�t fight people; one should never have to fight for what is rightfully theirs. So she can rest peacefully. And now I am going car shopping. |
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