"New message from ??? on MySpace ..."

Ok, I really need to get my own computer for my home, because it is SO FRUSTRATING when you're at work and you get an e-mail saying that somebody has sent you a message on MySpace, and you're DYING to know what it says, except MySpace is blocked on your work computer and the only time you ever get to check it is when you're visiting your parents, but you just visited them yesterday so you won't be over there for at least another week! Grrr!!

wishing I'd listened to myself

As I was walking down the stairs to leave my apartment building and go to work this morning, I had this awful feeling that today was going to be a Very Stressful Day. One of those days where I'd wish I had stayed in bed that morning. And if my inbox at work hadn't been so overflowing, maybe I would have.

I should have listened to my gut.

As if my current cartastrophies, apartmentastrophies and medicatastrophies weren't enough, I now believe that the world has gone crazy in its entirety. I've spent the whole day dealing with crazy people, ignorant people, confusing people, pushy people, and the occasional very nice person (I must be honest).

I really wish I could say that there was a full moon, but alas. People ARE crazy and they have no excuse.

disgusting, despicable behavior (not mine)

First off, let me apologize for my post yesterday. I was being a nattering nabob of negativity, as my dad would say, and though I cannot change the fact that I occasionally have such feelings, I don't really need to subject others to them. I have not deleted the post yet, though. I haven't decided if I will. A part of me wants to delete it to make it easier to pretend that my life is all sunshine and rainbows (Did I forget to tell you about the butterfly who landed on my head last week?). But another part of me wants to keep it up as a reminder of what will happen when I let my passing insecurities get the better of me. We'll see which part of me is the stronger part.

Now let me get to the topic of this post. I have an acquaintance who I am about ready to beat over the head with a sledgehammer (figuratively speaking, of course). He has a litter of kittens living under his deck. If you're on my e-mail list, you may have received an e-mail from me yesterday about adopting said kittens. If anyone out there in the void would like to adopt a kitten, I implore you to do so, because if you don't, these kittens are likely to die under this guy's deck. All because of his deplorable laziness, ignorance, indifference and apathy. That's a lot of nouns.

If I was in the position that the guy is in, I would do everything in my power to make sure that these cats are taken care of. Here are the things he's done: 1) he called Animal Control and some shelters in the area and nobody will come to pick them up - he'd have to deliver them himself, so 2) he attempted ONCE to gather them up into a carrier, but failed, so he gave up. His solution? Tell his neighbors to stop feeding them, and close his blinds so he doesn't have to look at them anymore. In essence, he feels that if he doesn't see it, the problem doesn't exist. I came up with many other suggestions, like canvassing the neighborhood to see if anyone wanted to adopt a kitten, or posting a picture on a website saying "free to a good home" or something along those lines. Apparently all of those ideas are too much work. TOO MUCH WORK MY ASS. I asked him point blank if he'd rather have these cats die under his deck than to take a few minutes out of his day to try and find homes for them. He told me, "I wouldn't let that bother me." Are you freaking kidding me? He just admitted to not having a conscience.

Admittedly, I am a sentimental person. I like dogs and cats because they're cute. I feel bad when I see dead animals on the side of the road. The couple of times that I've hit things with my car I've actually had to pull over because I was crying. When we put my dog to sleep, I literally cried all day to the point of exhaustion, and a good portion of the following week. Animals in need make me sad. I understand that these cats may not die just because he isn't finding homes for them. Perhaps their mother will be able to take care of them and teach them to find food themselves. I also understand that strays and their litters often fall by the wayside if they aren't fortunate enough to be noticed by a caring human. So my point is that if this situation had befallen me, if I was the person who had the opportunity to do something good for a litter of kittens so they would not have to endure the harshness of the outside world, I WOULD DO EVERYTHING I COULD. I am not above knocking on peoples' doors. I am not above putting up signs in my neighborhood that say "Free kittens to anyone who can catch them!" I am not above sending out mass e-mails to my friends asking if they wouldn't like a little furry friend in their home. And it infuriates me that there are people out there who feel they are.

maybe exercise? no, definitely not.

I should have stayed in bed today. I woke up to the sound of birds chirping ... wait, that sounds too pleasant, let me rephrase ... I woke up to the sound of birds screaming at me. My bedroom faces the courtyard, so I think their squawking gets amplified by a thousand in there. Plus, I swear I heard at LEAST three other peoples' alarm clocks going off before mine did. I don't know if a lot of people sleep with their windows open, or if the walls are just incredibly thin, but whatever it was, it was a little annoying. I seriously considered calling in "sick" but unfortunately, my conscience got the better of me and I bit the bullet and came in to work. I'm already regretting it because the morning is draaaaaagging. At least I have some shopping to look forward to this evening. However, it will be a bittersweet shopping trip because of the particular item I will be searching for ... fat pants! Woo hoo!! I've gained weight and my clothes don't fit!! I'm supposed to be losing weight because I'm getting off one of my medications (Did I mention that? It's good news.), but alas, it has not been happening. Last week I weighed myself and was delighted to see that I weighed more than I have ever weighed in my life. Lovely. But since then I've lost about 8 of those pounds, which must have been water weight because I don't know how someone can lose 8 pounds so quickly by only slightly changing their eating habits. My body is weird, what can I say. I'm hoping that this is just a temporary setback and that I'll be able to lose the weight pretty easily once I'm off the meds for good and can get back to a normal eating routine, but of course I fear the worst. The worst being that my metabolism is going through that change that happens to every woman at some point around (or before) age 30. It's a scary thought. But hey, even if that's the case, I can still lose the weight, it'll just be a little harder. Anyhoo, maybe I should just focus on the fact that I've never needed fat pants up until this point in my life, and that definitely has to be a good thing.

Red-Winged Blackbirds

Every so often I catch a glimpse of my childhood in the rear view mirror.

Wait. Stop. I don't really talk like that. Okay, start over.

Yesterday I was driving to my parents' house after work and saw a Red-Winged Blackbird and it made me happy. Why? Well, because when my family first moved into the house that I still lived in until very recently, there were a lot of empty lots in the subdivision. Actually, we were only the tenth house to be built, and now the place has its own zip code and Starbuck's. Okay, not really, but trust me, it's huge. So in these empty lots, my brother and neighbors and I used to play, building forts, climbing in dirt piles when houses would begin to be built, etc. We thought of these empty lots as extensions of our own yards. We referred to the two lots next to my house as "the field." It was great. Anyway, if you know anything about Red-Winged Blackbirds, you know that they don't build nests in trees, but in open, grassy areas. So as you can imagine, when our neighborhood was still in its development phase, there were tons of these birds living in all the empty lots. Moving there was the first time I had ever seen these birds before and I thought they were so beautiful - mostly black, but with patches of THE brightest red (and bits of white) on their wing joints. I loved them. However, slowly but surely, as the neighborhood grew, and the empty lots grew fewer and farther between, the Red-Winged Blackbirds started to migrate away from our community, to the places where they could still have the open fields that they so loved. Being a kid, I was probably too preoccupied with school and friends to really notice that they were leaving, but when I would occasionally see one, it would remind me just how many there used to be. And then, after a while, I didn't see them at all anymore. The area that I grew up in has changed so much since my family moved there, it is nearly unrecognizeable. When we built our house, we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was unincorporated, and the nearest main road was about two miles away, and was an empty two-lane highway connecting our town with the next one to the north. Traffic lights were unheard of unless you were actually IN town. In between the main road and our neighborhood was a sod farm, a creek, trees, and the occasional farm house. There were birds and animals and you really felt like you were out in the country. This is the reason my parents chose the place, as a matter of fact. And now? The two miles on the "country road" between the main road and our subdivision is solid houses. The speed limit has gone from an un-posted 55 to 35 mph. That former two-lane main highway I mentioned is now four lanes with a light every quarter-mile or so, McDonald's, Jewel, Target, Starbuck's, Kohl's, a thousand banks and gas stations ... and no trees. No cornfields. The unincorporated area in between towns has become a town in and of itself. There is no open road at all between our town and the next one to the north. You can't tell where one ends and the next one begins. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at all this. All in the name of progress, right? But do we really need another Target or Best Buy? Why wasn't it good enough to drive the extra 20 minutes to get to the one they built just down the road a few years before? That's the thing that I will never understand about suburban sprawl, or whatever you want to call it. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and had to drive at least 20 minutes to get anywhere! Heck, my high school friends never even wanted to come to my house because they said it was in "Iowa." So I drove everywhere. I'm used to it. I'm used to it taking time to get places. I feel guilty taking my car somewhere if it takes less than 5 minutes to get there. Am I the only one? Am I the only one who doesn't find it necessary to have a drug store 10 feet from my front door in order to live comfortably?

Ahh, I didn't particularly intend to go on and on like that, but I just got some thoughts into my head that wanted to come out I guess. But anyway, yesterday I was driving out to my parents' house and I saw a Red-Winged Blackbird in a grassy area between the main road and an on-ramp onto the highway. It was just a small area that hadn't been landscaped and still had the native grasses in it. It was only one bird, and as I sat at the stoplight, I just watched the bird going about its business and remembered how I used to do the exact same thing from my living room window. It brought a smile to my face, but also made me wonder if I am the only one who misses the Red-Winged Blackbirds. Probably not, but sometimes it feels like it.

Crappity-Crap

I feel awful. Physically. I feel worn out, and even though most of the symptoms of my cold are gone, I have this horrible, horrible pain in the center of my chest and back (mostly my back, actually). Everyone seems to think it is a lingering symptom of my cold (my doctor included), and I hope they're right. I hate to think I have any other wierd diseases on top of the one wierd disease I already have. My Mom even says she's had this pain before and it eventually goes away. I reeeeeeally hope it goes away. And soon. Sometimes it hurts so bad it makes me want to cry.

On a related note, I will be going in for another MRI soon to check on my aortic arch, in hopes that the inflammation has stayed down with the decrease in Prednisone dosage. Here's hoping. Though with this crippling pain in the core of my body right now, I find it hard to be optimistic about anything. Add to that, the increasingly intense wisdom tooth pain that I will need to get checked out soon, the unexplained pain in the back of one side of my neck that insists on keeping me up at night, and the sharp pain behind my right shoulder blade that has been plaguing me for months and shows no sign of letting up.

Hate to be a complainer, but yeah, it sucks to be me right now. I hurt.

Why does this bother me?

I have had curly hair for my ENTIRE LIFE. Until this week, I have never once successfully straightened it, so no one in existence has ever seen me with straight hair. Today I go to work with stick-straight hair for the first time in my life (yesterday doesn't count because I was kind of a hermit and it was in a ponytail anyway), and NOBODY NOTICES!!!! WHAAAA??

Okay, in all fairness, I shouldn't say nobody noticed. Two people in my department sort of noticed - one who is the most hyper-observant person I know, and one who mentioned in passing that it looked cute. But the people I sit with at lunch almost every single day did NOT NOTICE. Or if they did, they didn't say anything (which I didn't even think about until I just typed it and now it's made me a bit paranoid - does it really look that bad??). I make this gigantic change in my appearance and it does not even register on their radar. What gives?

Plus, I don't think I'm going to straighten it again. It took way too long this morning (freaking WASTE OF TIME I COULD HAVE BEEN SLEEPING), and as cute as I thought it looked during my trial run on Sunday, it was not-so-cute today. Maybe it's because it's winter and super cold and the air is dry, but the straight hair is just lifeless and stringy and very staticky (I added the "k" in there because the word looked funny without it - don't know if it belongs there or not). I basically have no choice but to put the sides up in barrettes for it to look decent, and even then it just looks flat. Curly hair just has more life and bounce - on me anyway.

Or maybe it's just because nobody noticed.

H