Poof

Proofing: defined as when a friend suddenly disappears off the face of the planet. This can be an extreme case, where all traces of your previous friendship have been erased, or a mild case of them just totally ignoring your existence.

I find the milder case to be the most confusing. I mean, if someone’s entire existence disappears, then some effort has been put in. This involves defriending you on Facebook, or removing their Facebook entirely, so that no traces can be found. Untagging photos that would have connected the two, blocking off the phone numbers….

Obviously there’s only so many answers here. If someone has gone to that length to poof, it’s one of two things.

1) you seriously fucked up and are too stupid to realize. In this case, they aren’t poofing, but more cleansing your stank off their lives.

2) they’re spies.

But the mild version? Suddenly they won’t respond to calls or texts, yet you’re still friends on Facebook. No angry rants have been initiated. No demands for apologies….
This kind of poof is usually preceded by what was, in all accounts, a pretty decent night.
Perhaps a party, where everyone left laughing and smiling. Or multiple parties.

To the mild poof I say, what in the fuck is the deal here?

I’m a decent person. I fuck up from time to time, but generally I am aware I’ve fucked up. To this poofing I say, what did I do?

Seriously.

In all honesty.

What and why? Previously we partied. Played video games. Previously we were fine and friendly and all that shit.

And now you’re poofing.

To you, you poofer, I say you are odd. I say you confuse me and I give up. I say, maybe you have split personalities and only one of them knows we are friends, so gimme a call when the other is in command.

Whatever and all that.

How many of you have been poofed on?

Thieves and Lawn Care

So, you stole my lawn mower. You insignificant little shit. You were driving through our neighborhood, I assume probably in someone else’s car because I don’t picture the types of low lifes who creep around in back yards to jack push mowers are the type to have a phat ride, and saw our half landscaped lawn, our paint chipped and peeling front door, our mass encampment of bitchin’ dandelions… And thought to yourself.
“These. These people deserve to have their day ruined.”

So, you moseyed on back into our yard and took a glance around and eyeing literally the only thing worth any value, swiped it, and went and pawned it off somewhere for 50 bucks.

Fuck you.

Rumor has it, that you’re probably some criminal whose moved into the newly renovated apartments at the edge of our neighborhood. This is possible. I, personally, think you’re probably that fat puberty stricken punk who lives next door and thinks I don’t notice him staring at me creepily through the drawn curtains.
I see you. I also see you when you stroll through my yard like its a side walk. I see you when you toss your trash onto the driveway, one foot from the actual trash can, so that it may waft with the wind into my yard which, while vaguely disassembled at the moment, has an owner who will report you to your landlord. While I’m at it, I’ll mention that your house is so full of refuse that you have multiple raccoons living in the attic, and that I don’t appreciate their close proximity to my door. They’re big, and I don’t fancy rabies shots in my tender bits just because you can’t throw a pizza box away.

Seriously am not joking about the raccoon.
But it’s ok. Either way. Whether you be a meth addicted hobo or a pimply teen. See, I bought a fence, you skanky ass punk.
But nooo, not your usual fence. I bought a tiny metal strand…and I will be wrapping this tiny strand around my new lawnmower. I will be posting a sign about this strand, in a place, where non-thieves who only creep through yards in daylight and with permission, will notice.
But not you. You won’t see the sign, because when you’re being a creepy fuck, the only thing you care about is the soon to be illegally acquired assets.
No. You won’t see it.
But you’ll feel that shit when it electrocutes your grubby little fingers and ankles! And when you yelp in shock and electric discomfort?
We will laugh. We will laugh and grab our gun to stick in your face if you’re stupid enough to wiggle my door knob again. Yeah, I heard you. As of today my house is armed, bitch. By an electric fence and weaponry. Fuck you.

I hope you trip and it gets you in the eyeball.

A Place Where I Was Happy

I’m depressed guys, only this time for a slightly more legitimate, if nastagia driven, reason.

See, growing up, my family has always gone to Rough River. It was our place. It is our place. One of the few areas appealing enough to flock to at the first sign of a long weekend. A cell recption killing, mutant mosquito swarmed haven of water and eery silence deep into the night. That’s a kind of silence you just don’t get in the city.

I’ve spent more days than I can count, or even remember, with my family out on that water. I’ve eaten carefully wrapped sandwiches, raising them up above the waters edge as I float, clumsy and puffy in my safety jacket. I’ve slurped watermelon carelessy, paying no mind to the sticky juices covering my face and hands.  I have fed turtles cheetohs. I’ve tubed and failed horribly at skiing. I’ve burnt to a lobstery crisp despite my mother’s warning to wear sunbloc, and laid, itchy and uncomfortably warm at night, knowing I was just going to do it again in the morning.

First, we went there and stayed in a family friend’s place. I only have a few memories that reach back that far; staring wide eyed at the bats long into the night, when I should have been sleeping, and chasing those lizards with the blue racing stripes, whose tails popped off at the last second, bestowing them freedom from my young and grubby fingers.

Then we went there camping, RV style. I loved camping, despite the fact that it forced me to be out of my privacy bubble. I looked forward to it, even though there were no true walls to hide behind, and showering involved protective flipflops and a large, cricket infested, cement building. It was by no means “roughing it”, but it did rip me out of my comfort zone on a regular basis, in a way that was more exciting than panic inducing.

On occasion, my sister and I even slept in a tent outside the RV. Oh yeah, wild women were we.

I remember bon fires and smores. A few special weekends when the family all went to the same camp ground and lined up the RV’s like a tiny tin neighborhood. I remember my mother’s tacky lights, transforming our small square into a cheery space to laugh and play cards.

Then came the camp. The Tilta-World as we named it, due to the waving of the walls and the slight tilt to the floor that made you feel tipsy in the middle of the night. It was a glorious, tiny, nothing that was our family’s everything many summers for many years. The kitchen, covered head to toe in green ivy wall paper, including the mirror and fan blades. I slept in a tiny closet of a rooom, adorned in treasures I picked up from peddlers malls and flea markets, and the ugliest green vinyl flooring in existence, which I thought was just absolutely beautiful when I picked it out. With a wraparound deck, mounted up on the hill, it gave a beautiful view to anyone willing to just sit and look for it. Again there were the camp fires and card games. Long days out on the boat, coming back exhausted and happy, slightly toasted, and longing for a shower.

And now it’s gone.

See, that beautiful little trailer is older than me. And it has held on for many years, God bless it, but last year when my husband and I arrived for Memorial weekend, we noticed the ceiling sagging. Dust around the edges, seeping in through cracks that were not there the year before. This year, we came down armed with saws and hammers. Nails and plaster board.

We were going to fix that beautiful nothing. We were going to prop its ceiling back up and reclaim its rooms. I wasn’t ready for the Tilta-World to be gone, and I was going to fight mold and mildew, spiders and hornets, to reclaim its presence. I wanted just a couple more years in the place that felt so familiar.

But we were too late. The winter was too hard on its weakend roof. We arrived to caved in ceilings and standing water. To mold overtaking the walls and rugs. We arrived to my childhood memories, falling into decay from neglect and lack of use. We took too long. We cared too late. And now there’s nothing we can do to save it.

I feel like part of my childhood died out there, alone, with no one to say goodbye. It shouldn’t have gone like that. It should have been fixed or replaced while it still resembled its  self. It should have been able to go with dignity.

It was a place where I was happy. And now it’s been destroyed.

Help I’ve Fallen and These Fuckers Keep Trying to Bury Me

I haven’t written in a very long while. I’m telling you this, as though you haven’t noticed because I can’t think of a more creative way to say

“Yo, I ain’t done shit with this blog in like forevah.”

And as usually is the case with Bipolar Irresponsible Bloggers, this is because my mind is traveling down a long dark tunnel and just can’t remember which way is out. The world has thrown maps and compasses in my direction, but seriously….if you don’t know where you are, how do you find out which way to go to get out??? If I don’t know which direction I need to run in, how does knowing which way is North help at all?

The hallucinations…Oh the lovely hallucinations which seem to bleed ever more regularly into the waking hours. 

What? You’re telling me you didn’t just see that person standing over us with a knife? Gee…in some ways that’s comforting. In other ways HOLY FUCK LOOK OUT!!! Oh…nothings there? Really? Well that can’t be healthy. 

And even when I’m not actively imagining people, spiders, voices, snakes, and this one instance where needles just suddenly rained forth from the ceiling, I’m having such vivid nightmares that I wake up and am honestly confused as to why people are no longer dead and I still have all of my toes. 

In the last two weeks I’ve woken up entirely convinced I was divorced.

That my mother was dead.

That my husband had cheated and impregnated a close friend. Seriously, entire months had passed.

That my lizard was dead.

That my other lizard was dead because the original lizard ate him. 

That I not only was pregnant, but had miscarried in a horrible current of blood and agony of which I hope to never have to fully describe.

And that I was going bald. 

Honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this disconnected from the world. And by disconnected, I of course mean batshit insane. 

In some ways I feel like I’m coping pretty well. 

Sure, I think about suicide approximately three times a day. But I haven’t done anything. So, I maybe keep waking my husband up by screaming bloody murder before hysterically weeping, wrapped in precisely all the blankets, in the middle of the bedroom floor. And I’ve had the occasional one-too-many drinks, but I’m still functioning.

I’m all full of work stuff, and house projects, and cooking. Every now and then I actually convince myself that I’m not actually depressed because depressed people don’t have the motivation to dig up the yard and do landscaping. Depressed people don’t have their shit together enough to make entire cohesive meals for their hubs. Depressed people just don’t do artsy shit with old picture frames and bits of ancient newspapers. 

Except that, apparently, they do. Because the second I stop doing all those things I crumple into a heap of angry despondent bitchiness the likes of which my poor husband has never seen. Except that he has, about three nights this week. 

I’m lost in a tunnel. I’m sleeping my life away. I’m so many overused phrases to describe depression because really no one knows how to describe fucking depression,  and all the while  I’m actively falling down this hole, so deep, and people keep shoveling dirt on top of me like I’m not down here telling them to get me a fucking ladder. Every now and then they stop and shine a light down into my pissed off face and go…”you need a ladder? But…you seem fine”

Oh well….at least I’m a productive crazy person. 

Warning: Cat Butt Contained Within

My cat has no sense of personal boundaries.
This is my view of Yoda 90% of the time…

The other 10%…

Reptile Mites are Mite-y Shitty. Hehe…puns.

Who here has reptiles? Everyone who just went “I do!” in that internal voice we all have that sounds nothing like we actually sound in real life, then you’re awesome.

Now, who here has a reptile or has had a reptile that was infested with parasitic mites?

Yeah, first off, I feel your pain. Secondly, how the fuck did you get rid of them!!!!?????

My Ezra, a red iguana has these mites.

 And let me tell you, the process suggested to remove them is both laborious and slow working. These little fucks are tiny, and despite my best efforts I still find a fresh batch of them laying on the papertowels I am temporarily using as substrate. Granted, this morning most of them looked dead (Yay!) but there were still a couple moving (Booooo!) And I don’t know how the hell those fuckers are holding on because I bathed the shit out of him. Let me explain.

Step 1: Discover that those specks of dust are actually moving. Recoil in horror. Google the fuck out of what those could be.

Step 2: Be horrified at the amount of time and money this will cost.

Step 3: So, he needs to be soaked and afterwards needs to go into what is hopefully a santized cage. Take the smallest cage, the one from when he was a baby, and submerge the entire fucker in bleach water. Be grateful you discovered them before transfering him into the 7foot tall monstrosity you just finished building. Let soak, along with all food/water dishes, branches, etc. Wipe down all chords and lamp fixtures with bleach water mixture, vacuum the hell out of surrounding areas. Come back, drain bleach water and then refill with cold water to both drown anything that escaped the first flood and remove toxic bleach. dry thoroughly and place paper towel in the bottom.

Step 4: Soak the poor infested lizard in a betadine/water solution. Pour plain water over his head so that mites will not just travel up his poor head to escape drowning. Use Qtips to obsessively scrub between legs and spikes, attacking anything that looks like a tiny red dot (this is especially frustrating if your iguana is red.)

Step 5: repeat Step 3 with the cage he can actually move in. Fumigate. How do you fumigate? Buy a few flea collars, open and set in the cage on top of some foil. Don’t let them touch the cage floor! seal tightly in plastic and let fumes gather for 3-4 hours. Unwrap and toss all plastic outside the house in case of infestation. Air out. In order to be safe, you must air out over night so the fumes don’t hurt your baby, who probably has an imprinted fear of Qtips at this point.

Step 6: Soak lizard again. Scrub again. Try to avoid getting tail whipped in the face. Fail and accept that this will probably happen again.

DO IT ALL AGAIN THE NEXT FUCKING DAY. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. Tonight is our 4th cage sanitazion, fumigation, switch out. Last night we added Prevent-A-Mite to the mix, which is approved for reptile use. you basically spray it on everything and air out for 30 minutes before replacing the reptile, being sure not to spray with repile or food and water source by you. Like I said, a lot of them looked dead this morning so let’s hope.

The only good thing about this, if you try really hard to be optimistic, is that the mites have no interest in anything but reptiles, so the cats and lil old me are safe and unharrassed.

If none of this works, we are going to buy predatory mites which eat parasitic mites, and release them into his cage to hunt the fuckers down. After all the parasitic mites are eaten, the pradtory ones will die.

So far the cost is….

2 flea collars: $6

Betadine which is almost out after 4 uses: $30

Prevent-A-Mite Spray: $30

Bag of bedding which had to be tossed in case of contamination: $15

And the Predatory Mites are another $30 not including shipping.

Wish me luck people. I seriously fucking need it.

Hello, Adult Responsibilities. How nice of you to stalk me until I give in to your whims.

I don’t post as often as I used to, and for the few that follow this blog I do apologize. This has been a time of massive change. Change in relationships, jobs, lifestyles, and expectations. And I don’t believe we’ve met but….Hi, I’m Abby and I don’t do well with change. Nice to meet you.

On the downside, I’m slowly losing my mind. But not as slowly as I was before, so actually I’m losing my mind at a disconertingly fast rate. I have absolutely insane dreams on the nightly, I have an unknown mass in my ear, and I talk to my cats way too much.

On the upside…

I finally got the ball moving on a few things, so I’m actually starting to feel better. As anyone who has ever attempted to go to college while not backed by a cushy trust fund, paying for it is a pain in the ass. Previously, I was making my way through the trenches of debt by way of a scholarship. A scholarship which has run out, leaving me owing roughly $2,000 to good ol’ UofL.

For awhile the prospect of student loans and impending debt paralyzed me. I didn’t even know for sure how much I owed, or what my options were as far as paying it. I didn’t want to find out. I just fled. Afterall, it’s not like school is something I love going to for numerous hours out of my day. So I avoided, avoided, avoided. At least until the fear of future unemployment and failure gnawed at my gut enough to kickstart my ass.

So, I don’t owe $2,000. I owe $1,700 precisely and am paying this off through monthly instalments of $149.00. The fact that the payment is $149 instead of just an even $150 both amuses me and tortures the fuck outta my OCD. As soon as I’m paid off, I can re-enroll. As soon as I can enroll, I can find out my financial aid options.

It’s a start. It’s a start that has let a smidgeon of air back into my lungs.

I’ll take it.