rough day

Today has been a hard day. I managed to coax all 4 of the kittens into the house with the food, and trap them in. The 3 originals were easy to get into the carrier, but the beautiful tabby boy was NOT having any part of being handled, and tried to get out the closed door, and then made his way into the kitchen and tried to go out the window that he usually sits in. THAT was a mess, he took out my pink ceramic parrot from Campo Verde, and my little elf man that had survived 1 leg/hand amputation & reattachment.

I had planned to clean him up and repaint him, because I do love him, he is older than I am, and spent MANY years sitting in a potted plant at my grandmother’s house, then at Mom’s. He’s now had his leg/hand amputation reamputated, his arm amputated to match that leg/hand, and had his other foot amputated, and chips are everywhere. *sigh* yeah, I think he’s going in the trash with the ceramic parrot. It could have been much worse, the crock from the large crockpot is still on the counter, the butter bell survived, and so did the garlic cellar. I eventually gave up and just opened the door to let him back out, and haven’t seen him since. I cried all the way to HSNT. I know that they stand a better chance there, probably, than at one of the city shelters, and I have a friend who works there, and can help be sure they find homes. The little tuxedo boy and the girl (lynx point) have already been vaccinated and taken to pet adoptions. They are both sweet, handleable kittens. She is much more of a cuddler than he is, but both allow themselves to be picked up and petted without putting up a fight. The grey is personable, but still pretty feral, he’s a flirt, and wants someone to talk to him, but doesn’t want to be touched, and is, of those 3, the mighty hunter… he regularly brought snakes and birds to the porch to show me, and there is a woman in the area who adopts cats to control critters around her barns, and he has a home there. I realize that this is the best option for them, but it was terribly hard for me to give them up, I suspect largely because they’ve been such a little spot of joy in my world lately, when it has seemed otherwise very dark. My situation is forcing me to give up so much, both physical possessions, but also my independence, and my lifestyle, and giving them up is one more thing that I am having to give up. I’m not nearly done packing, but most of what MUST go with me is packed, other than electronics that I’m not going to disconnect until the morning of the move.

Looking up

I don't want to get overly confident, but it appears that perhaps things are looking up, at least on the job search front. I had an appointment this morning with a local staffing agency. I had some success with them several years ago, before I had the job I lost this spring. Unfortunately, at that time, the positions they had available were nearly 50 miles, one way, away from my house, and the pay that was being offered would have been eaten up in gas. The good news is that they seemed impressed with my experience, confident that they would be able to place me, and, in fact, have a position that while it would likely be a year-long temporary position, I am an excellent match for, and it's in my industry! And it's less than 20 miles from my house (the last job was 26 or so)! I had put in all of my information online already, so there were only a few forms that I had to complete, and the orientation/office safety video. I just almost couldn't concentrate on it simply because "Sherlock Holmes" had SUCH a HORRIBLE British accent! At any rate, my Excel & Word scores were great, my typing speed was about what I expected, and my Power Point score was better than I had anticipated, considering I've done a whole ONE PPS in my entire life, and I generally don't have access to the program. Now I just have to wait for them to submit my information to the client and see when they want to interview me!

When I got home, I happened to look at my horoscope message that comes up every day on the welcome screen of my phone and found this: If you have been stamping the ground with impatience, dear Libra, waiting for the moment to jump into new adventures with renewed vigor after your meditation during the last few months, know that the moment has almost arrived! You now have the strategy, objective, and means at your disposal to success. Just a bit more work remains to be done. Gather your strength and get ready for action! Now, I don't live my life by the astrologer's statements or predictions, though I am often amazed at how accurate they are. This one came across to me as a positive reinforcement of my morning's activities.

On another note, there's someone in my world that has been quite important to me for awhile now, and the whole situation has had its ups and downs. I finally came to the realization that he is indeed an idiot. I have told him in the past that I need to figure out how not to be in love with him, and for awhile he gives me space, and then he sucks me back in, and I wind up tripping down that same path, flirting with him, looking forward to talking to him on some sort of schedule, and getting hurt feelings when that doesn't happen. It has occurred to me that this is all some sort of game to him, an idea that I resisted for months. If he REALLY wanted me to stop chasing him, and not flirt with him, he has had plenty of opportunities to either ask me directly to stop, or to talk to some of our friends who have questioned him about the whole situation about it bothering him. I am no longer going to stroke his ego just so he can feel wanted, let one of his other female friends, that he really gives a crap about do that. It's not as if he has women fawning over him. I don't know what it is that causes him to be unwilling to spend time alone with women who might actually be available to be in a romantic relationship with him, but for whatever reasons, the ones he will actually hang out and go places (other than with a group) with are all married or involved in committed relationships. My heart will eventually heal from this, but the whole situation is just another in the string of events over the past year that have caused me to question virtually all of my friendships, and my trust in both myself and the people with whom I surround myself. It sucks, and it's going to take me some time to rebuild my faith in my ability to trust what I'm dealing with.

Quote for the Day: Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we've learned and create something. –Liz Carpenter

Letter

I could just write this and not post it, but I'm kind of hoping that actually writing it will be cathartic, and probably on some level, that perhaps it might be read by the one to whom it is addressed, though I figure that's pretty unlikely. I have spent months trying to convince my heart to just give it up. I've come up with all sorts of reasons defending you and your inability or unwillingness to just come clean about the real reason you "don't have an interest in dating anybody right now." It's been 10 months since you told me that. I have spent time beating myself up about why I am not good enough to be loved by you. Why I am not good enough to be half as important to you as any of your other friends. I've been sucked in, repeatedly, by your desire to be in electronic contact every morning and evening, and allowed myself to believe that it meant you gave a damn about me, and that it might eventually lead to you caring as much about me as I care about you. Instead of listening to my brain that kept saying "don't be an idiot, he's not ever going to give a shit about you. If he really gave a flying fuck about you, he would actually TALK to you, instead of just IM or text" No, I had to listen to my heart that kept trying to convince me otherwise. And my friends who, much as they love me and thought they were doing the right thing, kept encouraging me to read things the way I WANTED them to be. I see now that I've wasted the last 10 months deluding myself, and that it has nothing to do with me, and it has nothing to do with you needing to deal with demons from your past. Your heart belongs to someone else, who is, I suspect, as unavailable to you as you are to me, though since you don't ever actually talk to me, I don't know the whole story. I would say that I don't care what the story is, but that's a lie, mostly because I hate not knowing what's going on, even if what's going on makes me sick at my stomach, as it did that Sunday in May. I am sure that there are those, probably you included, who will say "he told you months ago where he stood, he's been open and honest about that." That's all well and good, but you know what, the only men other than co-workers that I have been in contact with on a semi-scheduled basis have been those with whom I was involved in a romantic relationship. My "just friends" guy friends and I talk a few times a week, at best, certainly not twice a day, or more. It seemed important to you to say goodnight each night. I know I've been an idiot about this whole thing, and I hope that I've learned my lesson. Don't worry, I'll leave you alone. You won't have to worry about greeting me or including me in the conversation anymore. I'll find other things to do with my time than spend it with our friends when you are spending time with them.