Happy Saturday kids. I am bored out of my mind and nothing interests me. I am also emo as fuck, most likely as a result of partying last night and having made no plans for today. I already cooked a meal earlier this afternoon, because I was bored by 1pm. So cooking is no longer an option. I don’t feel like painting because taking out the paints and washing paint brushes sounds like too much effort at this point. I don’t want to watch a movie because I have the attention span of a fly today. I considered taking a walk with one of the cats, but both cats hate going for walks in the stroller now – probably because the neighborhood is so fucking busy and loud.
I don’t want to go for a walk alone, because I don’t like to get hit on by the gross men in my neighborhood, and when I am with a cat in a stroller, I don’t feel so alone or targeted since people are more focused on the fact that there is a cat in a stroller than to stare at me. I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t even listen to music right now, because not a single song can hold my attention for more than 30 seconds, and every musical artist I’ve tried listening to in the last three hours has grated my auditory senses the wrong way. Maybe I have ADHD… who knows. I just know I don’t want to be here alone with nothing to focus on.
Making matters worse, our family dog, Ceely, has been deteriorating at a rapid-rate, health-wise, for the past couple of weeks. When I was home last weekend, she wouldn’t lay down to rest or nap (as she was once accustomed to do), and instead, she kept anxiously wandering around the house in circles, tripping over everything. My mom brought her to the vet on Tuesday, and they suspected she had had a stroke. Apparently her left eye was also messed up and couldn’t focus. They prescribed her a medication for what is essentially ‘doggy dementia.’ This morning, my mom awoke to the sounds of thumping, and found poor Ceely in the midst of a seizure, so they had to bring her to the vet as soon as it opened up.
They vet now thinks that she is suffering from a brain tumor, and so they prescribed an anti-seizure medication in the hopes that it would help. Unfortunately, my mom said that things are not looking up, and Ceely has been aimlessly circling the house, putting her head in corners, and stepping into her water bowl because she has lost all coordination. She no longer goes up or down stairs, nor does she jump on my parent’s bed to sleep with them, as she has done for the past 11 years of her life. She also hasn’t been eating much and seems aimlessly lost, as my mom put it. My mom suspects they will have to have her put to sleep on Monday, because she doesn’t want to see her suffering, which is the best option, all things considered.
I hate myself for not spending more time with Ceely when I was home last weekend and for being impatient with her because of her aimless wandering, which was also making ME anxious. I regret not giving her more kisses and attention, since I was focused on my two cats, which I brought home with me. I guess I thought that she had a couple more years left. I guess I was wrong. At least I had some solitude to have a good, long cry today, since I was home alone.
Losing a pet is the worst – it’s just as bad as losing an extended family member. I lost my cat, Bijou, last summer, which devastated me for months on end. We still don’t know what happened to him, nor will we ever. We suspect he was either eaten by a fisher or a coyote, or perhaps, he got into the Roundup herbicide that our irresponsible neighbor was spraying all over his lawn. We never found Bijou’s body, which would have at least provided some closure. He just disappeared one night and never came home again. I think about Bijou every day. I know this sounds lame, but if you have a pet, perhaps you’ll understand; that cat saved me in so many ways. I really don’t want to sound like some pathetic loser, but Bijou showed up at a time in my life when I really needed something to take care of in order to take the negative focus I had going on off of myself.
He showed up in our backyard in the Spring of 2011 with his mother and sister, when he was still a small kitten. We started feeding the family of cats, obviously, because that’s what you do when hungry cats show up in your yard. Eventually Bijou became friendly enough to pet and to pick up, although his mother and sister remained feral. We eventually live-trapped both Bijou and his sister in order to have them neutered and spayed, after which, Bijou started coming into the house. Pot Pie (that was Bijou’s sister) disappeared the following Spring, as did their mother, but Bijou became the family pet. I remember I was living home at the time – it was the last semester of my senior year of college, and I was going through a really shitty time.
I had lived with a friend off-campus the previous year, and I’d had the time of my life. It was the first time in my life that I’d had my own apartment (not a dorm room) and therefore I became accustomed to freedom and fun – hosting wine nights and parties on the weekends, seeing my boyfriend on a regular basis, etc.. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to live independently the following year, as I had to do unpaid internships in order to get my degree, and therefore I didn’t have time for a job (which would have afforded me an apartment).
My grandma, whom I was very close to, died in the fall of 2010, which was really quite devastating. My parents were out of town one weekend in late September, and had entrusted the house to me and my younger brother. I remember I wanted to drive to the mall with my brother, and I’d made it about half-way when I decided I didn’t need to spend money on garbage lingerie from Victoria’s Secret (which is what I had planned to do). I turned the car around, and decided we should pay a visit to our grandma, who had been going steadily down-hill for the past year or so.
We walked into my grandma’s house to find her in a state of shock; she was shaking and non-coherent. Perfect timing, right? – considering that my parents were three states away and not home to help. I forced my grandma to drink water out of cup with a straw, and called my uncles for help. She was kind of in-and-out of consciousness at that point, and asked me and my brother what our plans were for that evening. My brother said something along the lines of “after this, we were going to have to get really wasted.” He wasn’t joking.
After my uncle and aunt arrived, we called 911 and an ambulance was dispatched. For some reason, after watching my grandma be carried to the ambulance on a stretcher, I thought that she would go to the hospital and get better in a few days – maybe go into a nursing home. I didn’t know it would be the last time I would see her. Needless to say, after that afternoon, my brother and I did, in fact, throw a huge party at my parent’s house, where I proceeded to get absolutely obliterated, in a desperate attempt to forget the events of the day and the state in which I had found my grandma. I took several large rips from a gravity bong and drank God-only-knows what. To make matters worse, a guy who attempted to sexually assault me earlier that summer showed up at the party, and I proceeded to throw a wine glass at him on the front sidewalk, telling him to get the fuck out. I was an embarrassing mess and eventually had to be put to bed by my own brother. How shameful…
The next day, I was hungover as fuck, emotionally wrecked, and went on a $400, online shopping spree at Forever21, in a desperate attempt to soothe my tortured soul. My grandma was still in the hospital at this point, and my parents were on their way home from Maine. I still thought my grandma was going to get better and be released from the hospital, but she passed away that night from kidney failure. I was pretty distraught about her passing, and the fact that I’d found her in such a state of distress continued to haunt me – I thought perhaps if I had visited her the previous day, she would have made it.
On top of that, at the same time, my three-year, long-distance relationship with my first ever boyfriend was falling apart. He had failed out of school and therefore was living back home with his family, in a town that was a five-hour drive away. I didn’t have the daily support of friends that I had had while living in my college apartment, nor did I have the emotional comfort provided by having a boyfriend who was physically present. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life or where my future was going, and I basically stopped eating out of depression and also stress.
ANYHOW – I digress. That kitten (Bijou) showing up in my backyard gave me a newfound hope and focus. I had something other than myself to focus on when he came into my life, and someone to nurture, since I couldn’t seem to nurture myself in any way, shape or form. I had something to look forward to at the end of each day – someone who needed me and depended on me – an adorable, fuzzy kitten waiting to be fed and coddled, when the rest of my day sucked, and consisted of me going through the motions and actions I needed to take to graduate. Bijou basically became the one thing I lived for, for about a year. He was the only thing that was constant and that I could depend on. Needless to say, he became my cat, and I will love him forever, even though he is no longer with us.
Not sure where that train of thought was going. I guess to sum things up, we grow attached to our pets – they are our family, and when they pass, it really makes us re-evaluate the passage of time and our mortality. Anyhow…
I went out last night to a party that didn’t even get going until 3am. I had to leave around 5am, as my boyfriend had work today at 11am. We haven’t had a day off together in weeks. He’s even working tomorrow, on Sunday, which he never does. We have plans to go out next weekend though – so that will motivate me through the coming work week.
I haven’t written any recipes or documented any profound meals in a while – mostly because nothing I’ve cooked has seemed that great. Oh well.
This is my life today.
The High Heeled C*ntessa 