Pet Peeves (Part 1)

I hate being made to wait. 


But not the average "you have to wait to see the doctor", or "you have to wait ___ many days for [a special occasion]". I hate being told "maybe I'll come see you later". Then all night there is no word as to whether or not they are on their way. "I'll let you know before I head out if I'm going to come over or not" and then nothing all night. Nothing. No word or anything. 


I hate it. 


I wait until it's absolutely ridiculously late and then go to bed more than pissed off. And when I wake up? All I want to do is yell at them. Especially when they know how much I hate being made to wait. Then I feel bad for being so angry because "maybe they got hurt or in an accident". But then they pop online and all that rage comes back and all I want to do is rip them a new one. 


But it never works. The trend continues and they constantly treat me like not even second string, but third string. The bench warmer. "If I've got nothing better to do, maybe I'll come see you." 


You know what? Don't even bother.

Text Based Fun

So it's time to take a break from being serious or advertising my brother. I'd like to take some time to talk about the joys of my life.


Recently my brother started posting a blog. Like I mentioned then, he is the funniest person I know. Makes me laugh like nobody else to ever exist ever. Ever. He is the only person in the known universe that can make me laugh by pointing out a flaw or insecurity of mine.The only. I have had boyfriends in the past notice this about my relationship with my brother and attempt to replicate it. This, of course, ends in a premature termination of our relationship because I don't take that crap from no one. Except my brother. But he does it with nothing but love and humour, and I know he does it with love but when someone else does it it stings. 


Anyways, we've been being ridiculous in his comments section in the style of a text based adventure game. It made me realize that more than anything I go through cycles of loving these types of games. I find them to be the best thing ever and then eventually forget about them and lose interest. It's possibly because I don't have much experience with good genuine text based adventure games. My experience is literally limited to the 3 you can find in the games section of the website HomestarRunner.com. They are as follows;

Dungeon Man which is quite literally over before you even get into it. 
Peasant Quest which is a combination text and graphic game.

Dungeon Man 3 which completely discards the reality that you should have a 2nd to a game before a 3rd. 


I'm very interested in finding other actual text based games, but really wouldn't know where to start. Can anyone help me with this?

I should have a big purple hat

And on that hat there should be a big lime green feather. This hat should also have a big matching fur jacket. And I should start carrying a cane! Why? Because I'm a mothering flipping pimp, people. Let the pimping begin!

Not to offend anyone, but my brother is the most hilarious person I know. He finally has decided that he's ready to start posting a blog. This link is your gateway to the awesome that is that blog.

You should be all about clicking that link. Right now! If you haven't yet, I hate your face. Has that persuaded you to click the link? No? Well it should have!

Dreams

I've been having a lot of dreams involving my old dog, Shmeg. They are so realistic that I don't want to wake up, but when I do I get depressed because I remember.


Just a note, that this blog post is probably going to get fairly emotional fairly quickly.


Shmeg was a dog we got when I was about 7. At the time we already had a cat, that was brought into the house when I was about 1. 

She was not happy with us and showed us by peeing on my moms down duvet.

Shmeg quickly became my best friend. When my parents marriage started to fall apart, he would come find me as soon as the yelling started. He would snuggle with me until it ended, and sometimes even a little after. Our house was a strict "no dogs on the furniture" house, but when my parents weren't around I would bring Shmeg up on the couch, or on my bed, with me to cuddle. 

We spent a lot of time snuggled up on my bed, especially when I was sick.

Anyone who hasn't ever had a close relationship with an animal can't understand how much I miss him. There will never be a dog to replace Shmeg, and I don't ever want there to be. He had this look to him where it made him look like he was smiling all the time. It made me happy.

And even when he wasn't "smiling", he was looking deep and contemplative. Like there was some deep meaningful thoughts on his mind. I try to focus more on the time we spent cuddled up on my bed, or the couch, usually watching t.v or movies when I wasn't feeling well. He went for runs with me and was the first animal to ever respond so obediently to me. Later we would get another dog, and you would really have to be forceful with your voice to get his attention, but Shmeg listened. Shmeg always listened to me. The way Shmeg died seemed fitting, what with all the time we spent curled up together when I wasn't feeling well. But I'm getting ahead of myself.


Our cat started to go crazy, literally developing dementia. She stopped cleaning herself, wouldn't let us near her to brush her, and was literally the kind of cat that would rather rip open your throat than let you bath her, or shave her. When she was at the tipe old age of about 15 we had to put her down. She had finally hit the point where she didn't know what anything was, not even her food. This was the first time we'd ever raised two animals together and were very unaware that when you put one down, you need to bring the other along. So that it can sniff the body and know that it's dead. Otherwise you end up with an animal with abandonment issues. 


Until we put P.C (our cat) down, Shmeg had loved other cat's. He always wanted to play with them, like he'd play with P.C. After we put P.C down is when we discovered that the animal left alive will develop emotional issues. For months it was a fight to get Shmeg to eat, or do anything. He would lay about lazily, depressed. He also started snapping at other cats. He would see one and go absolutely ape-shit. He wanted nothing more than to rip them apart, luckily we were the type of pet owners that only let the dog's off leash in safe area's, like off leash parks. 


My mom bought Shmeg a puppy, thinking it would help him with his depression. Well, that was her excuse. The truth is, since I was born she's wanted another Wolf-dog. She finally had a reason to buy one. 


Shmeg was about 9 years old when he started to develop health issues. The vet we were at at the time told us it was typical hip dysplasia that almost all German Shepards develop with old age. They were not the best vet office, and after other issues with them we sought out a new vet. The new vet informed us that we had been treating the wrong issue. He could tell just by watching Shmeg walk that he didn't have hip dysplasia, his spine was fusing together. I still cannot explain the anger and rage I feel towards our old vet. They wasted time we could have been spending treating the real problem. Instead, by the time we got him to the new vet and were told the real problem, it was too late. He had already lost a lot of muscle mass in his hind legs, and there was no fixing him.


He lived a couple months longer on pain killers, until he literally couldn't get up anymore. Once he started soiling his bed, we knew it was time. He was no longer living a good or happy life, he was suffering. My mother had taken P.C to be put down and was more than adamant that she couldn't do it again. Choking back tears, I told her I wanted to be the one with Shmeg anyways. He was my best friend. Like I said, at this point he couldn't stand up by himself. I had to pick him up and carry him to the car, then from the car to the vet's office. He was about 90 lbs and the heaviest thing I'd ever carried that long, but I didn't want to ever put him down, literally.


I will always remember sitting on the cold floor of the vet's office as they tried to sedate him 3 times before it took. Once it took, he laid there lazily, his head on my lap, looking up at me with that smile of his. He finally let the sedative take him, and he laid there peacefully on my lap, shallowly breathing. The vet came once more and it was finished. My best friend was gone. I sat there with him on my lap, on the cold floor. I didn't want to leave. The nurse came in, I could barely breathe I was crying so hard. But I had to let him go. They needed the room, and my son was starting to make a major fuss in the waiting room with my mother. 

I didn't want to leave him, much like my Uncle Ian only a few years before. I just didn't want to leave. Leaving made it real. The dream's I've been having lately have all been happy. We're snuggling and running and spending time with each other like we did when he was still alive. But I always wake up, look for him in a daze, and then realize he's gone and remember the feeling of his lifeless body in my arms.

Snoooooooooow!

Of course it snows again the very day that my mother and I are starting on the heroic adventure of gutting my house and pretty much cleaning it from top to bottom. Even the cobwebs in the basement will be lemon-y fresh. All I really want to do today is frolick around with my son in the falling snow. 


Oh well, let's just hope that it continues to snow so by the weekend I can make you all a super awesome snowmen. Snowmen are great! The only thing better than a snowman is the many hilarious ways Calvin and Hobbes make snow-creatures. My favourite is definitely the snow sharks. 

For those of you that can't read the text;
Hobbes is asking "Snow sharks?" And Calvin is replying "That guy's a goner"
I couldn't make the image any larger without completely throwing off the layout.

Hoarding

It's a serious disorder and I just want to say right now, that I am by no means belittling anything about it with this post. I just needed to talk a bit about it and how my mother does not understand what it actually means. 

Hoarding is a general term for the accumulation of food or other items. The term is used to describe both animal and human behavior. It is a normal stage of behavior in children
Hoarding as a human behavior falls in to two main categories. One type of hoarding is triggered as a response to perceived or predicted shortages of specific goods. Compulsive hoarding, on the other hand, is a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to acquire and keep things, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. The compulsive collection and ownership of pets is known as animal hoarding. Compulsive hoarding is thought to fall along the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders. [source]

Compulsive hoarding (or pathological hoarding or disposophobia)^[1] is the excessive acquisition of possessions(and failure to use or discard them), even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. Compulsive hoarding impairs mobility and interferes with basic activities, including cooking, cleaning, showering, and sleeping. A person who engages in compulsive hoarding is commonly said to be a "pack rat", in reference to that animal's characteristic hoarding.

It is not clear whether compulsive hoarding is an isolated disorder, or rather a symptom of another condition, such asobsessive-compulsive disorder.^{[2] [source]}

To really make you understand what I'm about to talk about, I should mention some stuff first. Less than a year ago my mother moved out of the house I was born and raised in, a 3 level townhouse, with 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, a backyard, shed and an entire basement. She moved from this, to a 2 bedroom trailer on an acreage with her boyfriend. When she left, she left a lot of her crap here too. It was part of our agreement. I would live here, rent it from her, but she would keep the stuff she couldn't take out there, because of lack of space, here. I was fine with it and for the most part left everything where it originally was. I guess this was out of respect and because I had just grown up with them being where they were. I had a roommate move in and she absolutely hated where most of my mother's stuff was, so she moved it all. I think that's beside the point though. 

Anyways, I don't have much stuff. I really don't. I've never lived anywhere but a single bedroom. So, most of the stuff in my house is my mothers. Oh, except for a bit in the corner of the basement, that's from a woman my mother practically begged to let stay here with me until she got her own place and the woman left one weekend in like July or August, saying that they were moving to Calgary (a city about 3 hours away) and that they'd be back the next weekend to pick up their crap. I haven't heard a single word from them since then. I have tried texting and calling the only number I have for this woman multiple times. So her stuff takes up about 1/4 of my basement. 

So today on the phone my mother accuses me of being a "hoarder". It's not the first time she's said it and I always find it so amusing and aggravating. If I were to put a percentage on how much of the stuff in my house is actually her's it would be about 45%. Then 10% is the crap from the vanishing woman and her daughter, and the rest is mine and my son's. Also, aside from the fact that only about 45% of the stuff in my house is actually mine, it's all stuff I do actually need. Toys for my son, my furniture, appliances, cleaning products, stuff I actually use on a regular basis. It is literally mind boggling to try to figure out how, in any informed human beings mind, I am to be considered a "hoarder" or "pack rat". 

If anything, I am merely disorganized or possibly even just lazy. Okay, very likely both disorganized and lazy. I live in a state of semi-chaos. At least the area's I frequent the most do. My computer desk, and my bedroom. I can only kind of see where she is coming from. My kitchen/dining room (because my house is not big enough for these area's to be separate) does have a stack of newspapers and cardboard boxes to be recycled. But honestly, the only reason they haven't been put out is because they need to be contained in the blue bag, and I don't have the money to afford the blue bag's. I can barely afford regular garbage bags. And even then, it's not that bad. They're not dirty or anything. They are mostly moving boxes and newspapers. They're even neatly stacked in an organized pile. 

I just really don't understand my mother. 

Thought Provoking

"Pretty much anything I say is probably trite, but I put forth a different perspective: Our 'mind and soul' is more like the flesh that contains it, not fragile and static like a china doll or a robot (tho Astro Boy's rocket boots were pretty awesome). Chips and cracks are more like scrapes and bruises. Breaks are still breaks, though (they just suck that much, they keep the name).

Like flesh, the wounds *really* hurt and it doesn't just "go away" as you will it. It takes time and sometimes it needs some therapy to help it heal. Sometimes there's scars (or a limp).

I think we are always - all of us and everyday - a work in progress."  - My dear friend Maskwa

This was a comment he left on my last post. The post about how I'm broken and feeling a bit at a loss. It really stopped me and made me think. I've been convinced I've been looking at myself the right way. Seeing myself as broken, damaged goods, and Maskwa gave me an alternate view. I just wanted to thank him for that. It's been helping me review myself better. 

I've decided to believe that we're all incomplete. Every one of us. Every day brings the chance for progress and also the chance for destruction. I'm not alone in feeling that my inadequacies make me less worthy of humanity, we are all inadequate. Every single one of us is not fit to be deemed "complete". We all have things we struggle with, parts of our selves that we hate. A lot of us project that onto others, seeing our flaws in them and hating them for it. For reminding us, even subconsciously, of our failings. I'll admit it, I do that daily. You probably don't want to admit it, but you do it too. We all do, because we're all the same. We're all suffering, struggling, fighting for or against something. 

We all have issues, whether they are obvious or not. But that's what makes us great, isn't it? The fact that despite our failings, our inabilities, our inadequacies we manage to soldier forward. We continue on in a hope to find these issues and fix them. Better ourselves. Perfect ourselves. Be complete. But will we ever be "complete"? 

Just something to think about. Thank you again, Maskwa, you've given me a lot of self reflecting and thinking to do. I'm determined to figure out why I am so damn focused on seeing myself as broken and not at all fixable.