FeatherLight » blues

Facebook ate my brain

Amanda — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:54:55 +0000

Well, hello there. Facebook didn’t really eat my brain… I’m just too lazy to keep updating my status there and keeping up with the blog. But I promise I’ll do better!

So, it’s Christmas. The first Christmas without Mom, which I’ve already decided will totally suck. It’s not that Mom ever did anything to make the holiday super-special or anything, but she knew it was my favorite time of the year. She always went WAY OVERBOARD with gifts, and while the gifts are not the important part, I always loved that she got me so well… she just always knew what I would like, even if it wasn’t something that I asked for. I will never again, for the rest of my life, get gifts as good as the ones she’s bought me over the years, and that just sucks. I’ve been so spoiled!

I went shopping for Christmas presents tonight – this was my first real shopping trip this year. I went to the mall, and wow. Talk about memories.

I went to Macy’s first – we didn’t have Macy’s in Indiana when I was growing up, but we shopped every year at L.S. Ayres or Carson Pirie Scott. Dad got new cologne, maybe a wallet, and always clothes. Walking through the perfume department made me think of Mom.
I stopped at the Hickory Farms kiosk – we used to get Dad a gift basket every year, so I bought one for old time’s sake. I remember picking them out with Mom when I was a little kid.
Next stop was Johnny Rocket’s for something to eat. As I took off my coat, I realized how hot I had been, and how cumbersome it is to carry around a winter coat in the first place… and then I remembered how we always rented a locker at the mall so we wouldn’t have to carry them around. Do they even have those lockers any more?
Finally, I went to JCPenney. We almost always shopped there for Dad’s clothes, because you could buy big & tall in the store rather than having to order it online. And picking up gifts at the catalog department!

It was just a crazy evening. It was like taking a little trip to Christmas past, minus the ghost to guide the way. Though I guess she was there, in a way.

Staycation

Amanda — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:03:24 +0000

So, it’s been a long while since I’ve felt inspired to post. Really, since I’ve felt inspired to do much besides sit on the couch and let my brain melt by watching too much television. Since I last posted…

The flies have gone. I still get the occasional fruit fly, but the big house flies are under control.
Moses and I have been spending time at a local dog park meeting new people and new dogs. He’s trying to make friends… it’s hard to run with the small dogs; they last much longer in the field. Moses is lucky to make it 45 minutes.
Moses and I have also been to obedience class – our last class is this Thursday evening. He’s doing well, not that he really needed it to begin with. I’m the one that needed it – I have a much better feel for timing, and have learned some nice tips and tricks.
Dad was here for a visit last week – he bought a new Sprinter, and flew in to pick it up and drive it home. He seems to be doing alright without Mom, but I know he’s lonely down there by himself. I’m trying to convince him to move back here, and I think I may be wearing him down. He injured his knee while he was here, and it occurred to him after he got home that if he has to have surgery, there’s really no one down there to take care of him. Gee, the car accident in April wasn’t enough to convince him of that?

That’s kind of it. My life has been boring: work is boring, home is boring… I need a change. Not sure what that might be yet, but I’ll figure something out.

Lady of the Flies

Amanda — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:04:22 +0000

Oh, God. I walked into the bunny room tonight to find that a first generation set of houseflies had taken up residence in the corner by the window, over Roxy and Rosy (the girlie pigs) cage. I had noticed more flies than usual in the house today but chalked that up to open doors and windows and ill-fitting screens – it was only 83 degrees here today and was a nice, breezy day to have the windows open to air things out. Evidently, the flies are coming from somewhere else and I’m terrified that that somewhere is the bunny room. Wouldn’t you think the highest concentration would be where they hatched?

See, this perturbs me for several reasons. One: while I may not keep my rabbit room sparkling, bleachy clean, I do try and change litter boxes and clean cages frequently enough to avoid something like this happening – for me, that’s one litter box every night, or a litter box change every 5th day. If I notice that someone’s litter box seems heavy or needs to be changed I’ll even go ahead and do it. Two: I HAD a fly infestation like this four years ago which prompted me to rip the carpet/pad out of the rabbit room and paint the concrete floor. The flies had laid their eggs under a plastic storage bin where one of my rabbits had made a puddle without me knowing about it and it hadn’t dried out, so made a nice, warm environment for baby flies to grow. Third: I plain old don’t have time to eradicate flies. There’s no safe way to do it around rabbits except for fly-strips and fly-swatters, and that’s just more time than I can spare.

For now I think I’ve taken care of most of them… there may be one or two hanging out lazily by the ceiling where it’s warm, but I’ll get ‘em eventually. I just hope none of them laid any eggs anywhere. I spent about 90 minutes in the bunny room cleaning the most suspicious-looking litter boxes and a guinea pig cage, and killing as many of the buggers as I could find. These are like mutant flies… it takes more than just a swat to kill them. It seems like they get stunned, fall down, and then I have to step on them, pick them up in a tissue, and flush them to make sure they’re really gone. I’m thinking they may have come from a pile of Moses poo that I picked up and bagged yesterday before mowing the lawn; it was, shall we say, infested when I picked it up, and I foolishly put it in the garage. There were not a lot of flies in the garage, though, and not a lot of traffic in and out today, so I don’t know how they migrated in the house… but that’s my hope. Because otherwise? I have to demolish the bunny room and start all over. And I don’t know if I have the energy for that.

I HATE BUGS.

Mom

Amanda — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:27:15 +0000

I’ve been trying to decide how to, and whether I should, write a post about my mother’s death. I wrote before about her diagnosis with uterine cancer, and she’s already gone. It was kind of a “one minute she’s fine, the next she’s not” scenario, and I won’t get into details, but it’s been such a hard month since it happened. We knew that death would ultimately be the outcome, but it was so FAST. I barely had a chance to process the diagnosis… let alone process the thought of never seeing or hugging my mom again, at least in this life.

I think we always know that it’s natural for our parents to die before we do, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic or sad. Mom was young – only 58 – and I thought she had lots of life ahead of her. Losing Mom has meant losing my best, best friend. I used to talk to her two or three times a day – for the silliest things, things I would never bother any other living soul about – and I can’t begin to say how many times I’ve come thisclose to picking up the phone and dialing her number. Dad joked about leaving her cell number connected, just so I could still call… but that wouldn’t be the same.

I thought I would have more to say about this loss, but there’s just not much to say, I guess. It’s the reason I’ve been so quiet – it’s hard to write witty posts when you don’t really feel all that witty. It’s kind of like the color went out of the whole world; it’s slowly coming back, just not fast enough. One of the things that irked me about Mom (and Dad) when she first became a Buffett fan was how she would quote him. She said Jimmy had a song for every situation, and by God, she knew which one fit. I asked her, the Wednesday before she died which one fit this situation… she didn’t answer, but I think it’s this one:

Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
from TAKE THE WEATHER WITH YOU
(Jimmy Buffett/Matt Betton)

I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man
Floating down Canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says now
Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And if I have trouble the warranty said
Breathe in breathe out move on

And it rained
It was nothing really new
And it blew
We’ve seen all that before
And it poured
The earth began to strain
Pontchartrain
Leaking through the door
Tides at war

If a hurricane doesn’t leave you dead
It will make you strong
Don’t try to explain just nod your head
Breathe in breathe out move on

And it rained
It was nothing really new
And it blew
We’ve seen all that before
And it poured
The earth began to strain
Ponchartrain
Buried the Ninth Ward
To the second floor

According to my watch the time is now
The past is dead and gone
Don’t try to shake it just nod your head
Breathe in breathe out move on
Don’t try to explain it just bow your head
Breathe in breathe out move on

Bad girl

Amanda — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:22:44 +0000

I’ve been kind of bad lately. Like, I know I’m doing something I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. Today, for example, I decided to take an afternoon break. 1) I did not take a lunch break, but rather brought my veggie pizza back to my desk and checked and answered emails while I ate; and 2) I very rarely, if ever, take a break – no addiction compels me to leave my desk two or three times a day (yes, I’m looking at YOU, smokers), and so I end up working through my mornings and afternoons without so much as looking away from my monitor. So today, I took my book, my gummi bears, and a dollar for a bottle of Dr. Pepper down to the cafeteria at 3:30. Where I sat, blissfully reading, until 4:45. HAH! It was great! By the time I got back to my desk, I had just enough time to write a weekly status report, call one of my users to answer a question she left on voicemail, and log out.

The bad part is that this kind of behavior – this slacking off of work, if you will – is becoming more and more frequent. I don’t feel the responsibility I used to when I think about work; I don’t think about the downstream effects of my actions. This really started last year, probably about mid-fall, with no real rhyme or reason. I find myself very apathetic about work… I actually told someone last week that I DON’T CARE IF I GET A RAISE THIS YEAR. Wha??? I should care. I need that money… my car is eventually going to die, my water heater will go out, my washer will kick the proverbial bucket, and I have no emergency fund. Without that measly two percent (minimum) pay increase, I won’t be able to save as much as I’d hoped. Kiss those hardwood floors goodbye. Adopt a dog? How about adopt a plant. But my apathy, my bad behavior, directly impacts my year-end review, which directly impacts my “merit” increase. I’ve even talked about this with my co-workers, who are feeling similar feelings… we finally decided that we probably shouldn’t talk about it anymore because we were totally bringing each other down.

I think what it boils down to is that I’m burned out. I’m tired of seeing other people rewarded for doing their day-to-day job, and yet not getting the same treatment from my “manager”. It’s degrading and demoralizing to be constantly told that you’re wrong. To be asked to be something you’re not, and then made to feel bad for not living up to unrealistic expectations. I keep thinking I should look for something else, insist on better or more, but I just can’t bring myself to care about it that much. I don’t work to feel fulfilled, and this is not a career. It’s a job. It’s the thing I do to make money. Maybe someday I’ll figure out a way to do the thing that brings me real joy and not live in total poverty so I don’t have to worry about feeling like this anymore. What is clear, though, is that I need to make a change. Something’s got to give… there’s got to be some way to make things bearable again. Right?

Backup

Amanda — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:32:50 +0000

I am afraid that my almost-8-year old desktop has given up the ghost. It worked for about 10 minutes lastnight – long enough for me to print a rabbit adoption contract and get some info from the internet – and then in the midst of installing the latest version of Java it just sort of went “eh”. The screen went all wobbly, and no amount of Ctrl+Alt+Delete-ing mattered. Unfortunately, I haven’t backed up files on that PC for some time… I’m going to try one more time to see if I can get it to boot up (I tried several times lastnight, and while it looks like Windows starts up, nothing shows up on the screen). If I can’t get it to work, I’ll take out the hard drive and try to recover the data. None of it’s very important stuff… just pictures and various and sundry other files. The desktop was supposed to be my backup for the laptop, but it’s obviously not reliable.

Now I need to find some other way to backup the laptop so I don’t lose anything else. I was looking at the Seagate FreeAgent Go because of all the pretty colors, but I don’t really have any great need for portability. The FreeAgent Desk comes in sizes up to 1.5TB (I can’t even IMAGINE filling something with more than a terabyte of data), and is not portable… I just need to figure out something.

This poor, pitiful Gateway has been limping along for at least the last 3 years… I upgraded the memory about 6 years ago, and then I upgraded to XP (it came with Me, if that tells you anything), and then I replaced the hard drive about 2 years ago. I’m kind of tired of messing with it at this point – I’m out of expansion slots, and the ones there aren’t really widely supported anymore; it came with a CRT monitor that I really wanted to replace, but just never took the time; and my laptop was configured to be a desktop replacement, so I don’t really need both of them. Now I have to figure out how to dispose of the thing… but I know there are tons of resources online for how to dispose of electronics.

Wendy

Amanda — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:58:26 +0000

I lost a good friend today, one of the best I’ve had in years. Her name was Wendy, and she had cancer of the spleen. She was a funny bunny… she and her boy toy, Waldo, have been living in my bedroom for the last 3 years or so, and she has entertained me, snuggled with me, comforted me, and made me laugh big belly laughs. I couldn’t help but love Wendy, even after she nibbled on the woodwork, ate my Bunny Suicides collection, and ripped the paper cover from the sheetrock on the wall behind their pen.

Wendy has been going downhill since late last summer – I took her and Waldo in for their annual exam, and because something had just been off with her for a while. The vet palpated her belly and noted that her spleen was enlarged; she took x-rays and found that her abdomen was so full of fluid that there wasn’t much visible. The next step would have been ultrasound, but since there’s no good treatment for cancer in rabbits, we really didn’t see the point. I brought her home to live out the remainder of her life – 4 months – comfortably, snuggled next to her Waldo. She surprised me by being her usual bouncy self all the way up to this morning, when she could no longer move around the pen. She tried… oh, she tried, and it was the most pitiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I just couldn’t let her suffer. For a being so full of life and vivacity, it was simply heartbreaking to see that her body could no longer keep up with her will. Waldo and I took her to the clinic and said our goodbyes, and just like that she was gone.

It’s never easy, losing a companion animal. Rabbits are special to me – as prey animals, they aren’t very trusting, so when they put their trust in you… it’s just one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced. Wendy came from a horrible place; she lived in a wire cage below another rabbit’s wire-bottomed cage, so you can imagine how filthy and nasty her hair was when we rescued her. She came a long way in the almost-5 years after rescue… I’m so happy I got to know her, and to share my home with her.

And now that my blog is officially maudlin, I’m posting the lyrics to Blackbird by The Beatles, because it oh-so-appropriately came on the radio on our way to the vet this morning. I know, I’m a sap.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise, oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise, oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Huh.

Amanda — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:27:29 +0000

Say, I think forgot to write a post yesterday. How’d that happen?
I guess I’ll be back later today with a post – I’ll have to try to make it really good to make up for missing a day. Oops.

Brrrrrrrr

Amanda — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:10:36 +0000

So, it’s November here in central Indiana, and tonight the temperature drops down to “I’m a big wuss”. It’ll be “around 30 degrees Fahrenheit”, according to local news. But it’s not just chilly here, no sir. I suspect it’s a little chilly in southeast Georgia tonight.

My mom and my brother have had a pretty rocky relationship over the last 3 years or so. She and my dad moved to Georgia before Wia was born so she could babysit for them, allowing my brother to pursue the firefighting gig and my sister-in-law to work her crazy early-morning hours. Mom babysat for them until they moved here in October 2007, and as it turns out, she’s a large part of why they moved back to Indiana. I think Mom has a hard time understanding that her two children are now her ADULT children, and we have lives and mistakes of our own to make. I think she’d like to keep sheltering us forever, but in doing so, she’s driving one of us bat-shit crazy. There was a lot of passive-aggressive behavior on her part… but I wasn’t there, so I only have the two versions of the same story that I’d get from each of them.

Don’t get me wrong – I think both Mom and RC are wrong in their behavior toward one another, and they will for certain need to find a middle ground if they’re ever going to be able to fix the damage they’ve inflicted on their relationship. I just don’t know what that middle ground will be, or how they’ll go about finding it. For me this is all especially difficult – apparently I’m a pacifist of sorts, and I can’t stand that our family isn’t one big happy family that gets together at holidays and LOVES to spend time with each other. I dream longingly of Martha Stewart Thanksgivings and Hallmark Christmases, but I’m afraid that’s never going to happen.

Things kind of came to a head this week with the advent of Bailey. Mom was there when RC gave away his first two dogs because his wife gave him an ultimatum, and while I know my sister-in-law feels incredibly guilty about that, it’s something we all think about and Mom thinks will happen again. She wrote an unnecessarily cruel email to him, voicing her opinion. He responded today, and copied me and Dad so we’d know what he wrote. He called me at work, in tears, to let me know that he’d understand if I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He apparently also called Dad to let him know the same thing… I’m heartbroken that he felt like he even needed to say that. I don’t know how this will all pan out, but I hope him unburdening himself allows him to finally move past everything that happened in Georgia. It’s like ripping off a scab, I guess. Now if Mom will just do the same… if they’ll just communicate. One can hope, right?

For the record, I question how in the world I’m related to these people. My family is not this family. We’re happy! We’re well-adjusted! We LURVE each other! I think.

Sleep is for the weak

Amanda — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:23:01 +0000

One of the unfortunate side effects of spending one or more nights at my brother’s each week is that even if I remember my laptop, I usually forget to write a post. See, I’m not one of those disciplined people that write posts ahead and set them to publish later… I’m more of a just-in-time kind of girl.

That’s true everywhere in my life, but nowhere more than my attitude about sleep. I am not an early bird in any way, shape, or form. I hate the alarm clock – in fact, the only thing I like about my alarm clock is the snooze button. I keep thinking I should try one of those clocks that wakes you with light, becoming brighter as the minutes click by. Not that it would help… it’s not that I can’t wake up in the morning, it’s more like my mind just can’t see the purpose in it, and my body is happy to comply.

Unfortunately, I have one of those jobs working for one of those people who sort of expects you to be there at 8am. I’ve been coming to work at 9am for several years now… lately, it’s actually been sliding closer to 9:30. And at the beginning, I felt guilty. I worried about the ramifications of coming in late. I even bought this book. Apparently, there really aren’t any negative ramifications for showing up late… yet. I guess I’m silently rebelling against the 8-5 mentality, and hoping the fact that I still work 40 hours or more a week is more meaningful than what time I actually get to work. All of this is one of the reasons that the ROWE appeals to me so much. I’d love to work somewhere where the results of my work are more important to my manager than the hours I worked to obtain them.

It’s a frustrating work environment for me, for sure. I wish I didn’t feel so stuck where I am… but until ROWE becomes widespread, I suppose I’ll live with it. At least I have a job, right?