DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2014-01-14 - 5:01 p.m.

I am BURNED OUT man, BURNED OUT. Holy shit am I burned out. I've been pacing around all day today trying to get something done but I am so burned out. It takes a massive amount of sighing before I can even begin one task. So I guess I need to give up for the night. I'll at least tend to the pressing matters; the litter boxes, the dishes, the sweeping but other than that, I guess I am going to have to start my work week off without a clean house because I can't do it. I just can't do it. Change, change, change, I need some change. I don't know exactly what I need to change but something has to be done. I'm fried.

So anyway. Here's a little catch up. Some things I've been meaning to write about but haven't really gotten around to because I've been too busy being a zombie.

That god damn cat is being a pain in the ass. He must be very feral, way more feral than I thought. We've been working on him since March or April, almost a year now! And we still can't touch him. I finally think that he thinks of the garage as a WARM spot but not a safe spot. He goes there when it's particularly cold but...like last night when it was never below 30, he stayed away all night. And all day today. I keep checking for him, expecting him back at any time, but he's not there. The worst part about this is that I am leaving the back door to the garage open on nights when he doesn't appear and I can lock him in for the night. Which means that I have a regular garage opossum now. And while I love this...it's just not good. It's much better when I don't have opossums to get attached to. Anyway. That damn cat scared the shit out of me last week. Remember, Saturday was pretty warm so he left for the day and then it started snowing and I imagine that he decided to stay wherever he was. My plan had been to lock him in the garage when I got home from work that night but he wasn't there. So Sunday arrived and there was still no sign of him and it was snowing like mad all day (!). For me it was a perfect day. It was not terribly cold out and it was snowy, snowy, snowy. I spent the entire day cooking and taking baths and reading. I made baked beans! They took eight hours! It was fabulous. But the cat never showed up. I wouldn't have worried much about it except that the polar vortex (LMAO) was due to arrive on Monday. And he never showed. And did it ever get cold. It was scary cold. And the snow was so deep. I was terrified he was locked in someplace from all the huge snow drifts and that he was freezing to death. It was a bad night for me. I didn't sleep at all. I had the camera set up in the garage to watch for him and I kept waking up to check it every five seconds. So then Tuesday was even colder! And I was totally freaked out but some time around two when I checked the camera I saw that he was in the garage eating. Whew. The second I saw him go to his bed I went out there and closed to door and locked him in. I opened the door back up every morning and left it open all day but he stayed put until yesterday when he left again. I imagine he'll be back at some point tonight, he'll be hungry and there is more snow coming. My opossum showed up last night and ate a tub of sour cream, a bunch of nuts, a bowl of cat food and some cheese. I like watching him on the camera, he's terribly cute. I sure wish I had a barn.

So that's the cat saga. Hopefully I can touch him before spring so I can get him to the vet to get his balls cut off. I had my other camera set up on the front porch last night just to see what shows up there and there was ANOTHER cat. I'll try to live trap that one, maybe he'll fall for it. Rudy never did fall for it, if he had maybe he would be tame by now. I was going to try to catch that other cat tonight but I don't have a solid plan in place. I need to figure out where I am taking it because if it is also a feral I will have to take it immediately to a place where it can be fixed because I won't be able to let it out of the live trap. Good lord.

The other cats are all fine. Bear is doing the same. I really need to take him back to the vet because I'm pretty sure that if he did have cancer all this time that he would be getting worse. But he's not worse. He's gained weight. But that whole ordeal cost me about $2000 even without a DEFINITE diagnosis. I need to recover from that expense before I start over on it. In the meantime, he's still getting that mega dose of rutin and the steroid and he's doing fine. His hair looks like crap and he breathes hard sometimes but he's still playing in cat nip, eating like a pig and being his usual self. So.

Work is fine. I'm SOOOOOOOOO glad the holidays are over. That was horrible. I had a mild breakdown shortly after Christmas. It's too much for me. I can either work in a restaurant through the holidays or I can be a person. I can't be both. It was way too much. It's the busiest time of the year for restaurant people PLUS we have the added "stress" of the holidays just as a normal person. It's too much, too much, too much. This year was the worst I have experienced yet.

The holidays were really awful this year anyway. Some horrible things happened to a lot of people around me this year. A few days before Christmas a kid I used to know when he was a baby was hit by a car and killed. His aunt and grandmother were women I worked with in Kalamazoo and he would often come in with them if one of them was baby sitting him for the day and his mom would pick him up later. So he'd hang out with me in the bar area while they were setting up for the night. It was a horrible shock for their family. Then, one of our regular customers, a really lovely, vivacious and KIND woman, died the day after Christmas from an aneurism. I had just waited on her three days before that and she was FINE. She was perfect, she was happy and laughing and she and I were cracking up because my santa hat had gotten soaked in the bathroom sink because I'm an idiot. (I took it off in the bathroom to scratch my head because wearing those stupid hats all night is awful. I had thrown it into the sink because there is no counter in the bathroom and I was looking in the mirror and had totally forgotten that the sink was automatic so the whole time I was scratching my head and rearranging my hair the sink was pouring water all over my hat. And I had to put it back on because I had terrible hat, sweaty head.) Her death really shook me up. She woke up the day after Christmas, said she had a headache and died. THEN, the day after that, another of our regulars died. I wasn't close with this one but her face was a familiar one to me. AND THEN...one of my old friends from way back, one of her friends had a heart attack (at the age of 45) and died. Suffice it to say...last week when a woman passed out while I was working I went into hyper mode. I called 911 faster than any person ever on the planet and then ran around the restaurant trying to find a doctor. The woman was out cold. She had told her friends that she was hot and was going to step outside. And then, the second she got outside, face planted onto the concrete. And she was totally out. Normally if someone faints they come to immediately. But this lady was out for at least five minutes. We dragged her inside and a customer who is a nurse started working on her. By the time the ambulance arrived she was awake but still really out of it. We still don't know what happened to her. Oh, and WHILE this was all going on another customer at one of my tables, fell right out of the booth in a faint. His was more typical, he fell over and immediately came to and was fine for the rest of the night. But jesus. It was terrifying. I kept thinking that there was some toxic gas in the restaurant and that we were ALL going to pass out. Fortunately nobody else did and the night ended eventually. So yeah. The holiday season was pretty tragic this year.

So that is all. Boring boring boring.

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