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Friday, Apr. 01, 2005 / 10:32 p.m. ~Total Rambling, Late, and the poor Pope~ This is like the movie "Blade Runner", but without all the flashing neon and noodle stands. A constant rain falls. I wondered at the noise earlier and realized it's just more of the same. I am exhausted, and it has been a long week, so long it's hard to remember how it all got started. Gladys is sitting with her paw on her stuffed frog, waiting for her supper. I felt her lump earlier and remembered that really we need to get it checked out - I wonder how big it will grow, unchecked. This can't be good. I've been privy to a few April Fool's jokes today, and wondered if a few more odd occurrences actually were jokes - it has been yet one more truly odd day. But, I got my comfort food after work, my Spring Rolls, my Tofu Vegetable Soup, and my Curry Tofu, with Fried Rice, and I almost ate every single morsel, but stopped to save some for tomorrow. And, continuing with the pedestrian nature of this entry, and the totally boring details of my life, I apparently have a new neighbor downstairs (the first in a year or more - yes, it's sat empty, the apartment downstairs, blissfully empty, until now - but she is not sleeping there, I'd hear her). I saw the truck, which has come and gone and come again and gone again, meaning this is one of those local moves that can take days, and I heard some banging around, and she will be there full time soon. I suppose there will be hammering, and odd and sundry noises accompanying the newness, and she will hear my noises, and we'll hear each other when we're in the bathroom, as that's where the noises really bleed through (the apartment manager had told me she's a she, and she lives alone, but that is all I know). Wait, here's an odd tidbit, I had a bad experience at work today, but I handled it rather well. Last week I 'inherited', as I like to say, a district from a coworker who was laid off, and she gave me some leftover problem paperwork before she left. I've been curious as to why she held on to these documents, old, old, from November, which is really old in our doucment processing scenario, and I've gone to the department manager about it, and subtlely mentioned that it may have been her fault these issues were not resolved before now. This was not good, as I was told it wasn't the rep's fault, and blah, blah, but I called the district contact today, a bigwig, and told him I'm holding these things, and they've been around since November, and he just exploded. He was so pissed off, said he knew nothing about them, and why was he only just now hearing about them, and I explained how I came in on it, and the person my coworker had contacted previously, and that obviously yes, there had been some miscommunication somewhere along the line, and he was nasty, but it wasn't about me, and I knew that. I knew that, and I recognized it, and I am proud of myself for not taking it personally, for once, the anger of a stranger on the phone - flashback to the call center on the other side of the office where I worked prior to January 2004. Yikes, flashbacks! But, I handled him, this guy, even when he said, "Well I'm not going to do a thing about this, not unless I hear from region", and I said that was fine. Later that day... okay, later today I get a call from another bigwig, a different bigwig, and this guy was the total opposite, so so so nice to me, and so willing to help, and wondering what went wrong, but we both agreed it didn't really matter, it was about going forward from here, and I told him I inherited the district and he wanted to know what other districts I have, and I told him, and he listened. And I told him I'll be their contact now, until the end of the month, and he asked about me, what I'll do then... And am I really getting 'laid off', is that what it really is?, and yes, I am, and he felt badly for me, I could hear it in his voice, and I told him I've been there for 'about' seven years, but really it is just over seven years, and he knows that's a long time, and he was just so nice, I think he would have hired me to work for him, and I almost asked, jokingly at least, but he is in the D.C. area, and I do not want to relocate to D.C., though it is nice up there, decidedly. Then I had to email the department manager to tell her I was making headway, and she thanked me and said "Good job" or some such, as she is a former 2nd grade teacher, and she is all about the forced praise, which can seem nice if you let it. I let it. I like to feel I'm appreciated, and I knew if I took this bull by its horns I could lasso it and have it on the ground begging for mercy in no time. It only took me a solid week to make it happen, but I did. Yay, me. The poor Pope is almost dead. The media seems to be waiting, now that Terri Schiavo is gone, they need a new bedside by which to hold a vigil. Maybe every week we'll have someone important and meaningful die a slow death and we can all watch and wait with baited breath. Poor Pope though. He is awful terrible sick. Must be so hard to die like that. All shut down and in pain. I hope he's getting morphine at least. More "Blade Runner" flashing neon/noodle stand acid rain outside. Pouring straight down and with a vengeance, a purpose. The levees will break soon and thank god I am on high ground, second floor even. Gladys is pacing, her lump weighing down her saggy old belly. One side sags worse due to this heavy lump. I just didn't want her to have surgery, so I've been avoiding taking her in. I don't want Dr. Handsome to say she needs to have it excised, and then risk the anesthesia killing her by mistake. I'd hate to take her in when she seems so damned healthy and happy, just because of a saggy lump and never get to bring her home again. In Waiting For My Cats to Die, today, the part I read in my one hour at the reception desk (which is all the time I spend on this book a day, hence me dragging it out for days, when really I could read it in a few hours, no doubt, front to back - but it's so good I don't mind dragging it out, I hate for it to end really), Stacy Horn describes how she thinks it's going to be when she has to 'put her cats to sleep', when the kidneys have failed, or the diabetes has caused general system failure, sort of like the Pope's systems failure now, and how she wants to give the injections herself, and it's very difficult to read this part, though she is so matter of fact. Like I am when I'm talking about something horrific I read or saw in the news, "And then the guy took the baby and dismembered it and left it buried in all different spots in the woods", or whatever. But it hits so close to home, and I realize I never think that far ahead with my girls, I never imagine their final moments, I don't want to come close to thinking about it until it is absolutely time. I won't picture needles filled with serum, or should we do it here, should Dr. Handsome come here, or will we go to his office?, no, they're fine, both cats, they are, except for the occasional upchuck, it's fine, with us. But she is obsessed with death, in general, and in such a matter of fact way. Again reminding me of me, and that book I read about the deaths of several very famous people - it was mini biographies, and then how they died, and it might have been called How They Died, I don't know, I can't remember, I read it in the early '80s, but I would try to engage others in what I was reading: "Hey, did you know Freud smoked cigars even after he had portions of the inside of his mouth removed due to oral cancer?" - and his death is the only one I remember from that book, but I found it all so fascinating, the end of these people's lives, how it happened, how long it took, what they said at the end. Rather like Stacy Horn interviewing the elderly, asking them about their fears, and what they regret, and what they'll miss when they're gone, what of their belongings do they hope survives? I saved so much of my parents' things, and my grandmother's things, papers, clothes (well, my mother's clothes), mementos, because they were meaningful to them, but when my father died and my brother and his wife were going through his possessions they were ruthless, throwing things out with a sense of glee in the purging. I am haunted by my father's address book which was enclosed in a pile of his effects we dumped at the Salvation Army in their drop box. What were we thinking? His address book? His ashtray where he set his pocket change? And the change itself? People do not cherish their pasts, it's true, Stacy Horn goes searching for her ancestors, finds them dead and buried, and even looks for the ghost in her apartment, because it is all meaningful to her. I feel it too. Ah, I ramble now. I'm going to feed lumpy girl, and her friend the other cat, lumpy to whom I sometimes refer as "Clarence", as that was the real name of Lumpy on "Leave it to Beaver". Again, the similarities between Stacy Horn and her cats and me and my cats are uncanny. I feel like this woman is my soul mate. I read her book and think she is me, but in a different, maybe in a more grownup way. But we are the same. Really, I must carry on here. Cost of the War in Iraq
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