Seeing the sun for the first time.

I have been very busy lately. Busy with work most of all, but also busy with cats (sitting on them, in particular), busy with family, and busy with this holiday season.

Because of my schedule, however, I feel like I never see the sun anymore. I kind of miss her. I have been trying to wake up early enough to see her, but she always goes to sleep an hour or two after I rise. Bummer.

Hank, and human depravity.

Hank appeared at my parents' house two weeks ago with squinty eyes and lots of little scratches and cuts on him. It was obvious that he had seen the brunt of several cat fights. He was hungry, but he was also very frightened. He was frightened of the other cat that hangs around the house, frightened of me, frightened of the dogs inside. Of course my parents put food out for him. While he was eating, I came up and pet him a few times. He loved it. After a while, though, the dogs barked. Hank ran away.

Dubbed "Hank" because he looked almost-but-not-quite like a cat my parents had taken care of before (named Henry), Hank made quite the impression on all of us. He was a big, bruiser of a cat- no neck, a huge head, and big paws. Through all of the dirt and filth, you could see that he was white, with large ginger splotches. He soon became more outgoing, and would rush up to us and rub against our legs. He was neutered, and was most definitely used to people. Why on earth had he been abandoned?

As the week wore on, it became more apparent that Hank couldn't stay outside my parents' house. Linus, the other outdoor cat, was getting beaten up. Hank's eyes looked awful. We finally made the decision to take him to the Humane Society.

The people at the HSSA were absolutely wonderful. They realized just how special Hank was, and took me straight in with them. They ran a few blood tests on Hank to see if he would be able to be adopted. Unfortunately, both the FIV antigen snap test and the IDEXX RealPCR FIV test came back positive. If he had been more healthy, he would have been able to live out the rest of his life at a no-kill shelter, however he also had anemia. His eyes were another issue. No matter how aggressively they tried to treat his them, they would not heal. His immunities were not up for it.

I am going to be with Hank while they euthanize him today.

I can hope that the past two weeks have been high points in his life- I know that he has been warm and had plenty to eat and a lot of love. For those of you who work or worked with me, you guys remember Jane- SHE has been taking care of him. We all know that means he's been WELL loved. I wish there was more that I could have done for him, however I can say that what I wish more than anything that whoever owned him had cared for him. He did not deserve to be dumped and left to fend for himself. Despite all the care my family and the Humane Society have given him, he certainly should have had more. He should have been able to have a life.

A rich, full day.

Today, I woke up ridiculously early after going to bed ridiculously early the day prior- I blame a food coma, despite my obvious lack of turkey consumption. I made muffins and cleaned my house. The muffins were a gingerbread with cranberries and yogurt chips. I was experimenting. They were awesome, freaking delicious. They were so good, in fact, that I invited a friend over to try one. He agreed that they were, indeed, freaking delicious.

Along with cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming, and all that jazz, I decided to be a good fish owner and clean my fish tank. It needed to be topped off anyway, but what it needed more than anything was to be cleaned, conditioned, and have its filter replaced. Done, done, and done. There was more than a little complaining on the part of my five fish- especially my plecostomus, who is huge and could probably best me in a battle. I offer to your photographic evidence:

Compare him to the platy. It's like having Shamu in the tank, if Shamu was completely terrifying. I am scared of this fish, yet endeared to him at the same time. Classic Stockholm Syndrome.

I have avoided any retail stores today. I think that Black Friday is a disgusting tradition. Sunflower, the market, was not busy, and I therefore purchased a few meaninful items to om nom at whilst at work. I will need it, as I have not slept much today and I work in twenty minutes. Humph. I suppose I will go now.

,

So I finally got around to getting my car checked out. It's been making an unpleasant noise since about June, but it had been running fine, so I did what most people would do: ignore it under the assumption that if something was really going wrong, my car would subtly tell me of its problems. You know, subtly, like spontaneous combustion while I am in the driver's seat. Turns out all the trips to Phoenix were probably not the best idea, as a water pump was falling apart (hence the noise) and on top of that, the fan belt was wearing down. But the point of this blog is not to talk about how seemingly intelligent people do incredibly stupid things. The point of it is to say that I've gotten these parts fixed, and now my vehicle is running just fine. I no longer have to listen to my music at a higher decibel to mask out the grinding, gurgling noise that it was making. Points for my ear drums!

Speaking of intelligence, grammar and usage has really been getting me down lately. No, I've not been messing it up more than usual. I just assumed that anyone who had gotten through basic eighth grade English class would be better at speaking and writing their native tongue than they truly are. I guess I begged the question. I use this term less because I want to and more because this is the correct manner in which it should be used. Begging the question means to beg (assume) that there is truth to something without seeing real proof. Another painful usage error is the term "for all intensive purposes". Really guys, you should know how to say it before you try to act smart, irregardless of your true IQ. (Irregardless is another pet peeve of mine, and therefore was placed in that context purposefully.)

Will found this sentence on a slashdot.org forum the other day, which is why I bring all of this up:
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. Which begs the question, "Who cares?"
Please tell me that someone else is as annoyed by this as I am.

xo,
B.

PS- My birthday is in approximately ten days, depending on where you live geographically (this means you, Robin). This means that I have succeeded in proper metabolic function for twenty-three years!

Dreamscaping.

It's not that I am feeling mopey or pathetic, but I am having mopey and pathetic thoughts run through my head I may as well dump them out into some sort of medium before I go to bed in the fond hopes that I sleep slightly better.

I have had unsettling dreams for the past three nights in a row. Though I have yet to wake up from said unsettling dreams to find myself changed in my bed into a monstrous vermin, things still haven't been rosy. Each night, these dreams have caused poor sleeping, waking up more frequently and more fatigued than anything else, and uncomfortable night sweats. I wake up remembering my dreams and the feelings involved in them better than I remember the previous day, and I am caught in some sort of haze that I'm not fully freed of until I actually leave the house completely.

This is not a new development. I am not sure why this happens to me as often as it does. All my life, I have had vivid dreams. They became particularly unruly when I got in to middle school, and I usually can't go a month without having something that, for me, is truly a nightmare. As far as I know, there is nothing I can do about it. I am not one who can trim and tailor my dreams to fit my wishes; I am a terrible dreamscaper. I can't just will myself to think of something else. I just hope that it doesn't last much longer. I want a good night's rest- never mind the fact that it will be during the day!

An open letter.

Dear Sir,

I am sure we have a lot in common. For instance, we both appear to be human. I will take a guess and say that we are both probably within the ages of 18 to 55. And both of us certainly like music. This, though, is where we part.

I say this because I would not park in front of a set of apartments with my music blasting. I do appreciate being able to hear my music when in my car, but not at quite the same decibal level as you. No, if I have to scream at the top of my lungs so that my friend may hear me, as you were clearly doing right outside my apartment this evening, I would probably have turned it down. Also, if my vehicle was vibrating because of the bass notes that were eminating from the speakers, I have to say that would have been a clue that the music was too loud. However I do know that some people like vibrating sensations, and who am I to judge you on your more personal likes and dislikes?

I will be honest with you. I did not actually wake up because you were screaming at the top of your lungs. It wasn't because I thought that maybe, just maybe, I was finally being abducted by aliens when my walls and bed began to shake. No, I was renched out of a comfortable stupor because my cat began to cry every time the bed lurched to your bass-heavy rap. Yes, I mean it. He wailed every time.

In closing, I'm going to beseech that you please, please learn to turn down your dial. There are many beneficial elements to this. Not only will I be able to sleep and you won't scare poor, defenseless critters, but you may have better hearing in the years to come. So go ahead; turn it down. You'll thank me later.

Yours,
Brenna

Phobia!

I went to Phobia tonight, and I must say that I was impressed for several reasons. I like being scared, and this definitely did it for me. They had good jumps and a couple of things that were truthfully unnerving enough for me to be scared. It was quite easy to get trapped in the moment and become frightened. Plus, it was in a huge, empty Linens N Things building. How creepy is that?

There were two 'haunts': Voodoo and Asylum. The way that they were described to me by the ticket lady was as so: "Well, Voodoo is more of the outdoors elements as well as inside, you know, graveyards and that kind of stuff. Asylum is an asylum, it has patients and doctors and clowns." Because, you know, all hospitals have demonic clowns. I must say that while I despise clowns, Voodoo scared me more. It had the advantage of being longer, and it seemed much better coordinated. The first thing you saw upon turning the first corner was a black-shrouded figure walking past you and disappearing into a black wall. The tricks and chills went on. You never knew where to look; at one point some guy started screaming at me, and it took me a second to realize that he was actually squatting above me on a fence. One of the creepier effects involved a blood stained bride walking towards me in a dark hall lit only by a strobe light. She had the perfect evil face, and because of the strobe, it didn't look like she ever moved, she just got closer.

Because I am who I am, though, I did manage to make a couple of the actors break character. My favorite break of character was the cannibal cook. The room was blood splattered and there were body parts all over the table. This equally bloody cook came out clanging a pan and cleaver and screaming. He got right in my face (they like to do this, especially to someone who looks scared) and screamed, "DO YOU WANT SOMETHING TO EAT???" to which I replied, "No thanks. I'm a vegetarian". I don't think that this guy had ever had a response like that, because he paused (stopped clanking around and everything), chuckled a little, and just said, "Really?" Then tried to get back into character. He got me back at the end, though, because I had just come through a dark maze to the exit and he popped up and said, "DARK IN THERE, ISN'T IT?" To which I jumped, because I hadn't seen him appear.

Payback is hell.