Hurricane Relief

Looking at the devastation from this storm is unbelievable. Having an idea of the destruction that doesn't seem to be ending is heart-breaking and staggering. Almost too big to get your head around. These kinds of natural disasters are horrible. The aftermaths horrific. The rebuilding seeming out of reach. But there are ways we can help.

Thank God for volunteers and organizations, like the ASPCA and Red Cross who take on the tasks of serving those in desperate need. My heart goes out to those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina and implore anyone and everyone who reads my words here to please take the time and visit one of these sites and give a donation if you can. Any amount will help. And if you don't have anything to spare, please think about passing the information on.

And please don't forget about the thousands of animals who also need rescuing, medical aid and help. I can imagine how terrified they are and how much worse this is for those who have lost everything. When you only have the soaking wet shirt on your back, being reunited with your pet can make all the difference. We can't forget about our animal friends.

http://www.redcross.org/

http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer

http://www.hsus.org/


Thank you in advance.

Betty

Someone has a case of the Monday's

Things are holding steady, internet. Thank you for the vibes, they seem to be working. Boo is now the golden-plated kitty with the mystery disease and still with the cloudy eyes. She spent the day with the animal ophthamologist (I know! Who knew?) on Friday and after they squeezed her eyeballs and put instruments up her ass, a diagnosis is nowhere to be found. However, yesterday I did come across the 2005 calendar I got from the Zoological society, after looking for it the last 9 months, so that's something.

The possibilities of FIP or lymphoma are still on the table, as-well-as the incredibly frustrating accompanied-by-a-nonchalant-shrug "we might never figure out what it was". The latter being my first choice, of course, but would make the money I've spent a little more painful. An amount much closer to a grand than not. Money that I believe I'm obligated to spend since I made the choice to adopt 2 animals that are dependent on me for everything and it's my responsibility to keep and make them healthy, but is not easy to shell out at a certain point. Especially when I'm making payment arrangements for my own medical bills. Gah.

The medication routine is brutal, neigh, BROO-TAL, with much screaming and squirming and hate. Oral antibiotics twice a day causing choking, coughing and hate. Steroid eye drops in both eyes three times a day causing shrieking and clawing and hate. Did you know cats can make over 600 different vocalizations? At least 3 of those sound like a sack of parrots being stuffed through a coffee grinder with the Exorcist playing through a loudspeaker in the background. Just try and put drops in your cats eyes. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

And the whole neck-scruffing thing? Yea, that's not working. Thanks a lot over-chatty eye clinic chick. It does not calm my cat down. It does not make it easier. It Pisses. Her. Off. With hate.

Boo is obviously feeling better, finally, and slowly getting back to her normal moody and temperamental self. Something that I'm so relieved to see. Even if she does sometimes look at me like I smell of blue cheese left out in the sun next to a corpse. It's better than her being a little pile of sick looking miserable and forlorn and scaring her mama.

She even brought us a "fresh kill" last night. Wailing into the bedroom about her triumph. This little show involves her walking down the hallway with one of her toys while bellowing through her full mouth saying something that I'm sure means "I've kiiiiiiiiilllllled it for yoooooooooouuuuuuuuu".

I then give much praise and attention to the big brave killing beast and invite her to please, please come join me on the bed so I may give you a proper belly rub and even more love and admiration where she will undoubtedly drop the simulated dead thing and once again look at me like I'm made of a steaming dog shit with an IQ to match.

These are all very good signs in my book, since they're all things she hasn't done in almost 2 weeks. And there is still an above-average amount of lap sitting and purring. I'll take advantage of that while I can. Even to merely assuage my guilt for the eye drop agony.

Hopefully this will all turn out to be nothing more than a short, expensive scare and I'll have Boo around for many years to come for mutual torture and affection. Hope hope hope.

All that being said, I'm feeling decidedly empty lately. I'm not sure what internal/external forces are causing this. OK, well, that's not entirely true. I'm aware of several good reasons for this stinky melancholy I can't shake off. For several personal reasons, I quit taking my anti-depressants. That's been difficult. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but I can feel it contributing to this turdville and I'm back to tearing up while watching bad reality TV. Damn that Super Nanny.

Money is a huge issue. There's not enough of it, I'm not making an amount to sustain living in Southern California and very soon I'll have almost none. That freaks my shit out in a way I can't let get out of control lest we self-destruct or move back in with our parents. Perish that thought.

Also, I'm overwhelmed with a capital FUCK ME with responsibilities that continue to grow. No amount of organizing attempts are helping. It just get worse. I'm stuck in a time-warp of decisions. Stagnant like a pond full of dead tadpoles. Trudging through life on exist mode is not working for me. But I don't know how to get out of this quicksand. I need a friggen Oprah moment. WHERE IS MY OPRAH MOMENT?

I wonder if you can get high off of kitty antibiotics?

One small gem of happy, I am going to San Francisco this weekend to spend 2.3 days with my best friend Matt in the gayborhood. We've scheduled a spa day and have tickets to go see Wicked. I'm so looking forward to it. You can't imagine. Maybe a couple days by the bay will re-charge me a little. Either that or I'm gonna be drunk until New Year's.

One worried mama here

One of my kitties is sick. Sick with some mysterious disease that has made her look like a sad clown with cloudy eyes and a fever and a slightly sticky coat, but that could possibly be from the liquid antibiotics she keeps sputtering out of her mouth after I try and glurg them down her throat. She's listless and miserable and I'M SO TERRIBLY WORRIED!!

So folks of the internet, I need some good vibes today. Not for me this time but for Boo. I haven't heard from the vets office yet and have no idea what's wrong. It could be anything from a simple mysterious infection to fatal feline leukemia. Or god forbid, kitty AIDS. Of all god damn things. Just thinking about her hurting makes me cry. The waiting sucks and the worrying sucks more. But the thought of losing her is almost more than I can bear.

My Boo is my sweetheart. My I will love you when the fancy strikes me on my own terms thankyouverymuch you filthy human. She's been my little buddy since I scooped her up into my arms, while she screamed like a banshee in protest, and moved her and her sister from my neighbors house to mine. That was almost 2 years ago and I can't imagine life without them. And despite her moodiness, she still purrs whenever I give her a good hard petting and that makes me melt. Every damn time. I love the purr.

Her sister doesn't pay much attention to me unless I'm safely sitting on the couch or am possibly making my way towards the kitchen where the treats live. Otherwise she runs away. Little fucker. But Boo has been my shadow since the day my kitties allowed me to live in their (my) home. Boo has almost always slept on the bed with me occasionally on top of my guts, likes to lay in my lap when I'm at the computer, after crawling up my arm and patting me with her paw, and is one of the funniest, weirdest, most entertaining cats I've ever seen.

She's loud and picky and psychotic and loving and strange and cute and a pain in the neck and demanding and sweet and funny and I love her! She plays fetch like a dog, running back to me with wadded up paper balls and water bottle caps. She sits in the bathroom when I get ready in the morning and tells me all her exciting plans for the day. And she likes to make love to plastic bags. (Don't ask). Lord help you if you accidentally hit the end of her tail while walking past. You will get a hearty squawk of displeasure!

She loves her tummy rubbed and her chin scratched and teases her sister until she receives a menacing hiss. Then walks away with haughty satisfaction. She licks the shower tracks and runs away like a naughty kid when I yell at her to stop. She roots under the covers and sleeps there for hours at a time often joining me for a weekend nap, her body up against mine. She acts like one drop of water accidentally flicked onto her head might as well be acid. And she occasionally lets me squeeze her while I baby talk into her ear until she plunges a claw into my thigh.

She's awesome and I love her so much. I'm praying this is something she can recover from. Boo has helped me through some rough times in the too-short time I've had her and I sincerely hope I can get her through this one. So please, send a good wish her way. I would really appreciate it.



(Boo is the trouble-maker on the left. Yes, I know she's sick and I'm worried beyond belief but don't tell me those 2 don't look like double-trouble!)

Painful memory #4,922

Being a student of behavior, I'm always extremely interested in the mind and its endless weirdness. Why do we have all the white-hot embarrassing moments etched into our brains forever and most of the good moments are shoved way back in the file drawer in a dusty folder? I was reminded the other day of a particularly uncomfortable moment in my life that in my plethora of psychoses, replays often. Why? Cuz I'm crazy, that's why.

My last quarter in college happened to be in the Fall, since I was cramming 5 classes into my schedule to finish in early December. One of those at a junior college 42 miles away round-trip. I was a maniac and sick to shit of school. I wanted OUT.

Being on the quarter system, my university started late in the Summer and finished early in the Spring. Our quarters were only 11 weeks long, which pissed me off to no end that I paid the equivalent of a black-market rhino dick for books and on average we only used a third of it. Then the fuckers at the bookstore would offer something really great like a whole fucking dollar for the "used book" that you'd opened twice and still made that creaky cracky sound if you tried to open it. Was a fucking scam, it was. But I digress...

That year it just so happened the first day of school was on my 24th birthday. (Yes, it took me eleventy hundred years to get through school so just shut up). I was feeling surprisingly ambivalent about it, which is rare since I try and turn my birthday into a national holiday that lasts at least 2 weeks. But I was very focused on school, my boyfriend was 100 miles away, and I didn't really care. About any of it.

I get to my first class, an upper-division Psych. course with a flamboyantly nerdy female professor who reminded me of a proper lady from 1850 complete with that up-do with a bun, which she wore every stinking day btw, but whom I suspected enjoyed the wacky tobacky in the afternoons. She might have been dressed in silk but she was supiciously half-lidded all the time.

After her brief introduction of our syllabus, in her slow toked-out manner, she instructed the class that we were to take turns one-by-one giving our stats. Year in school, major's, some little tidbit of personal info, etc. This is normally a painful exercise, but being a Behavioral Science major I'd gotten used to it and enjoyed watching the underclassmen squirm in their chairs while they tried to speak to an entire classroom of strangers. Or soI thought...

I was sitting in the second or third seat on the right wall, my normal spot that I'd claim on the first day and send out the usual don't even fucking think about sitting here ever vibe, and was one of the first to talk. When it was my turn I started with the requested and average info, Senior, BHS major, graduating that quarter, taking more than a full load.

Much to my unending for the rest of my life regret, without the ability to stop myself, out of my mouth popped "and it's my birthday!" Oh christ on a crutch. What was I thinking? Of course I immediately wished I could suck that back into my retarded brain. These people don't give a fuck about me or my birthday. What was I thinking?

With nary a beat skipped, the professor says, without a hint of sincerity, "Well then, let's all sing Happy Birthday".

Dear Earth, please swallow me whole. Thank you, Betty.

Mind you, I've only blushed about 4 times in life, but at that moment I think I turned a soft shade of eggplant. My eyes widened to saucers and I tried to stop that train of horror with my mind chanting over and over "no no no no no" and several lunatic hand gestures. But to no avail.
I proceeded to receive the most lackluster, pathetic, and slightly resentful rendition of the Happy Birthday song I've ever heard.

To make matters worse, if that was possible, when they all got to the stanza where you mention the birthday celebrator's name, I heard "Happy Birthday dear...ahhhh, ummm, what's her name again?" And the rest either fizzled out without the proper ending or I slipped into a welcomed and short-lived coma. With all eyes resting on me for what seemed like eternity, it took them 9 years to finish that song but that radioactive lead balloon finally landed. I think I actually punched the kid behind me to start talking.

And I still cringe thinking about that one.

2 for the price of 1

Jury duty turned into somewhat of a nightmare. And not the regular imagined horror show of sitting for a million mind-numbing hours with a huge group of circus freaks in a room smelling of b.o. and breakfast burritos. Waiting on the edge of a stained seat for a heavily accented clerk to call your name or sweating bullets praying to be released into sweet, sweet freedom. Ah, yes. Freedom. I didn't have that for long...

I showed up like a good girl and turned in my 'call for duty' slip ready to be added into the pool of gong-show contestants of potentials. I'd barely warmed my seat when I heard my name called over the loudspeaker. Hrm, I thought. That is odd. No one else was called. Guess I'm a special kind of slave to the state today.

I followed instructions and went to the jury office to see what was up. Perhaps the court gods were showing me mercy and they'd discovered their horrible mistake of calling on me for the 125th time in the last 5 years, only to learn that I was too brilliant to sit amongst the mouth-breathing heathens they call peers.

I didn't pay much attention to the black uniform-clad police officers at the front desk, since this was a courthouse and they're lousy with cops. Before I was able to say any more than my name, I was surrounded. In one swift move I was told that they'd run my name upon arrival and discovered a bench warrant for my arrest. WTF?

The long arm of the law spun me around and slapped some cuffs over my delicate wrists. Everything was moving at the speed of light and I was having trouble comprehending what anyone was saying. There was something about a car accident not reported, blah blah. Laws of the state, yada yada. Violation code whatever.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in the back of a squad car with my purse between my knees being driven to "intake". My fingers stained with fresh ink, I was photographed, booked and thrown in a holding cell with very little information and no idea when I'd be released. I wasn't even offered the obligatory phone call and this sure wasn't Andy Griffith's pokey. With it's soft blankets, Otis the lovable drunk and the sheriff playing his guitar. This was hell, with an attitude.

After about 20 hours of sitting on a bench and squeezing my ass-cheeks together so I didn't have to use the dixie cup stapled to the wall that was a supposed toilet, someone walked by and called my name. I lunged myself at the cold metal bars, begging for some information. I was informed that I would need to make bail of $1,000.00 in order to be released, or wait until Monday for arraignment. Holy shit, that would be like 5 days. I had no idea what I was going to do. I began to bawl...

I needed to call whitey, but it's not like they let you rifle through a phone book and I didn't have his work number handy. And how the hell was I going to come up with that kind of cash? This was a nightmare of epic proportions and I didn't know how I was going to get out of it.

I decided the best course of action was to call one of the local bail bondsman places and see if they could help me. I had to leave a message on voice mail with the little details I had, the women's detention center I was in and the amount I needed. I thought that this was yet another very bad sign. I just hoped they were well-versed in helping people like me get out of these kinds of jams and would come to my aid, pronto. This was not to be.

After yet another night in hell, my name was called again. I was filthy, hungry, exhausted and terrified. I'd had to do things I'd never imagined I'd do. But a girl needs some tp and a smoke now-and-then, alright? An officer opened my cell door and instructed me to follow him. I obliged with pleasure, happy to be away from my crack-addict cellmate, Crazy Mary.

I was met by a small man with greasy hair and a haggard notebook under his arm. We went over the details of my bogus arrest and my financials. I was more relieved than I've ever been in my life when he told me they could help and I'd be out of there in a matter of a hour or less. I felt like I'd taken my first breath in days.

I managed to get ahold of whitey and he took the bus downtown to my car, used my spare key and came to collect my stupid ass. The whole matter was basically a goof and all I needed to do was file a report. There was no fine and the bench warrant should never have been issued. I've already contacted a lawyer and expect a hefty pay-day for this monumental fuck up. Soon I'll be wiping my ass with 100 dolla bills...

Too bad none if it's true! That would have been an awesome story.
___________________________________________________

OK, that wasn't very nice of me, was it? But I had to come up with something creative for why I've been absent an entire friggen week. There's really no excuse, except for the fact that I have no damn extra time for anything, I'm tired and cranky all the time and just like normal, have a million crappy things happening.

I actually did get out of jury duty since I woke up that morning with my stomach playing foosball in my guts and I spent a good part of the morning trying not to shit my pants and hoping I wouldn't be called into a courtroom while I was sitting in the john. It was awful.

Then the Imodium kicked in and reversed the entire process for like 3 days. Argh. I did go to the jury office and told them I was as sick as a dog and they let me go. Just like that. Next time I might bleed a little for a more dramatic effect. That would be cool.

I had mixed feelings about the whole process this time. I think it's important for people like me to serve on a jury, but I'm also jaded and cynical and think that most humans are fucking morons and I'd hate every minute of it.

And I'm not too keen on the whole mandatory servitude thing. We have a volunteer military, where people sign up to maybe be killed, but jury duty is a draft? WTF? Anyway, I got out of it and will wait until this time next year when I get another fucking letter. Bah.

Reporting for duty, sir!

Jury, that is. My state wants me and they want me bad. Luckily it's not in the form of a warrant for my arrest or men chasing my butt with a white "I love me" jacket and shoving me into a padded room. Yet.

I get called for jury every damn year, it feels like. Last year I received a summons for Superior court on a Friday and Municipal on Saturday. Can you believe that shit? Jeez people, I'm good but I'm no Marsha Clark. I wouldn't be caught dead with that crap head of hair and those cankle-making flat shoes.

I managed to get out of the Municipal summons since the big wigs who send the perps to pound me in the ass prison over-rode the got drunk on 4 beers and stole my daddy's Saturn and crashed it into a Krispy Kreme court. Mmmm....Krispy Kreme.

I tried with all my wiley ways to get out of it last year but apparently cancer treatments aren't as important as determining the fate of 4 foreign fuckwads who try to smuggle 6 thousand pounds of blow on a stolen fishing skiff through the Panama Canal. Sheer genius. I had to sit through 2 days of...oh sorry, I was remembering those 2 days and my brain stopped.

It was lame and tedious and lame. In the end I had to stand at a podium, talk into a very loud microphone and answer too many very personal questions about my health history to complete strangers and convince the judge that I wasn't your typical weasel trying getting out of my civic duty. I'd serve if I could. I really would. If was reasonable and didn't suck the ever-lovin' life out of me.

But I truly didn't have the physical strength to endure a 6 week trial driving 60 miles round-trip in suck-ass traffic, pay $20 a day for parking, walk in the scariest part of downtown dodging homeless guys and puddles of piss, and getting reimbursed the phenomenal sum of $5 giant clams a day. And can we just talk about the bathroom issues! I have an unpredictable pooper, people! I can't be trapped in a fucking courtroom all day for chrissakes! What if a turtle crowns? I'm up shit creek, literally.

So, I was dismissed. Fat lot of good that did me. Here I am again. Dammit. Thankfully I'm in a little better shape physically, but it's still hard for me to sit in one place for more than an hour without getting up and walking around, my energy levels are wonky, and I'm supposed to get my period tomorrow. Great Odin's raven! SUCK!

I sort of wish that I felt like serving. I was on a jury in college and it was a great experience. But it only used up 4 days of my summer vacation and it was an interesting case. But I learned that people are unintentionally stupid, outright lie, and use their own personal agenda's to make decisions. Ignoring evidence. And I've seen that observation reinforced a quadrillion times over since then. Hello, Michael Jackson jury? Now I'm older, wiser, and crankier.

I'm afraid that if I get onto a jury, and we made it to deliberation, the first moron who says something stupid would find a styrofoam coffee cup lodged in their colon and all eyes would be on me. Then I'd get arrested for assault with a man-made product and my "they're all fucking idiots" defense won't fly and it'd be a whole thing.

Therefore I will be a good girl and report as ordered tomorrow, act like a surly teenager and do my best to get out of it. My plan is to either develope a raging case of Tourette's on the way down there or be brutally honest. Either way'll work, I figure. I'm sure time will come to a screeching hault, it'll suck big juicy gorilla balls, but can you imagine the parade of freaks I'll get to watch? It'll be better than sitting on a bench at Disneyland.

Will report tomorrow night.

My head is pounding, bear with me

OK, this post is going to go all over the place, I'm predicting, so please hold on to something bolted to the floor. Thanks.

I think I clenched my jaw so hard last night in my sleep that I broke a tooth. I woke up with a ripping headache and it feels like my brain is in a vice. I don't seem to have the time to tweak my tits much less write anything mildly entertaining. So pardon my retardation. Thanks.

And can someone please bring me some mother fucking candy? Again, thanks.

_____________________________________________________
I still don't feel much like hashing through my week with the famdamily. This is a combination of me not wanting to go all ranty in every post, although I know that you sick fuckers love it, and in reality, it doesn't make me feel better. Actually, it makes me feel worse. Sometimes it's not a good idea to shake that dusty rug out, you know? Especially when you didn't make sure you were down-wind and all the skin cells and dust mites go right up your nose causing your eyes to tear and your throat to close. Besides, I'm allergic to that shit.

I came home last Saturday very stressed and very sad. the really bad stuff didn't last long and I managed to shake most of it off, but I was left with a feeling of disconnection and aloneness. (That's an awkward word, isn't it?) The problems in my family are not unique, I know that, but they are to me dammit and that doesn't make it hurt any less to know that everyone's relatives are crazy.

To feel like an outsider in your own family sucks. I've always known that me being adopted and my brother being my mother's biological child has been a big factor. I used to be introduced by my grandparents, "This is Betty, -whispering-, she's adopted". Trust me, this bullshit was not lost on me because I was young. And oh crap, I've plunged the opener into this can of worms and a whoosh of acrid air just escaped. Let's just say there are a lot of fucking issues here and I probably need therapy. Whatever. I need a fuckit bucket. Where is my candy? _______________________________________________________

The subject of children continues...

As professed my entire life, I do not have a biological clock. A dogoligical clock, yes. A yearning for (more) stretchmarks, (more) sleepless nights and (more) aggravation, no. However, and baby, please know that I'm in no way thinking seriously about wanting to procreate, am I going to miss something if I don't have kids?

Christ almighty, the internet is lousy with mommy blogs and the ones I read are full of hilarious tales of kid tomfoolery. Or they at least make puking kids sound funny. And one of the people I admire most in the entire world just adopted her second child and I'm over the moon with happiness for her. It's got me thinking, a lot. We can all blame this on her.

I got really sick of my niece last week and I did feel sort of bad about it. Until that fucking whoopee cushion was blapped on the back of my fucking head for the 129th fucking time. Then I was positive that being a mommy was not for me because one, I would never have bought her that retardedly foul and loud stupid toy in the first place, and two, I would have poked a hole in it after the 3rd time I heard it.

Truthfully, I really don't have that much interest in kids. It's not about patience because I have a shitload of that, it's about enthusiasm. And I barely have enough for myself. I had to stop from being a total dick every time my niece proclaimed something like "I think I see a moose in the bathroom". Oh bullshit, you did not. I have no energy to play 4,000 games of crazy eights and I certainly don't let little monkeys win. I'm a Candyland pimp, yo. Suck it. And my stint as a pre-school teacher made me very appreciate of being able to hand the rats back at the end of the day.

But...but...but what if I'm making the wrong decision? What if I'm using this stupid cancer as an excuse? Or my age. Or my bank account. What if my instincts are faulty? Am I'm going to be missing out on the key to true happiness? Am I'm going to deprive myself of the best thing I'll ever know? What if I totally regret not having any? What if my kid was totally cool and I wanted to be around them for more than 15 minutes? Man, this is way worse than the reunion decision.
____________________________________________________

Gosh. I'm so out of things to say. There hasn't even really been any good reality TV to dish about or make fun of. MTV has some new dec-horror show where they redo people trailers, of all fucking things. Complete with a cast of white-trash rejects and a flaming designer that looks like a coked-out blond Freddie Mercury.

Don't believe me? Check it out. Contrary to popular belief among several assholes, I don't lie. This thing was seriously one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever witnessed. So of course I'm hooked after one show. It was visual heroin. I even threw up after.

And since we're speaking of MTV, just what the hell is wrong with Shakira in her latest video and why is she having a seizure on the floor while some surley dude with a coffee cup watches? Seriously. WTF? That poor girl looks like she's trying to impersonate a sidewinder trying to pass a kidney stone. Get a grip, sweetie, get off the floor and go back to that butt-shaking thing you do so well. You're starting to look a bit loca.

Oh wait! I do have a reality TV personality (she types using the sarcasm font), to rant about. Hey Howie from Big Brother 6 or 7 or we don't care. YOU ARE A COLLOSAL TOOL! Stop wearing your baseball hat sideways you non-gangsta whiter than white man from suburbia! Stop flexing your teeny tiny biceps covered in Neutrogena self-tanning lotion! Stop talking about all the hot women you're going to bone! Because you are LAME! DO YOU HEAR ME?!? LAME!!

You have the appeal of a herpes sore. You are as attractive as a pulsating white head on the ass of Ron Jeremy. I would rather spend the night in a gas station bathroom in Barstow with severe vomiting and diarrhea and no running water than let you get one finger on my body. Your legs are made of chopsticks and you have the vocabulary of a woodpecker.

You are not hot, you are not a playah, you are not a pimp. You're 35 fucking years old and live in Colorado with your mother. You want to become a weather man so you can get laid but the only people who are ever going to fuck you are your relatives from the south and paid prostitutes. So SHADDAP already. AND FIX YOUR FUCKING HAT!
_________________________________________________

Now, where's my candy already??

Another visit survived...barely

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.