Away for five minutes, and suddenly, it’s waterworld.

This morning I get up late, as usual. It’s three in the afternoon, I’m still half asleep. I let the cats out of their cage (yes, they are caged at night), feed them, go to the bathroom. All the morning ritual stuff. Then I go into the kitchen to get something to munch on, off in my own world as usual, not realizing that a room away, the floor is beginning to fill with water. I’m taking my time, eating a square of cornbread just standing around next to the island watching my mother mess around with the dishes.

I wander back to my room, because I hear running water. I’m thinking ‘must have left the sink running’, but then I have the panic thought of ‘oh shit!! The toilet?!’. It has been acting up lately, running and running because one of the parts is broken. I’ve just been fiddling with it to get it to stop, but it needs to be replaced. Anyway, I open the door, and the water isn’t even in the bathroom anymore! It’s entered into my room itself, which thankfully has a lino pathway that stopped the water from hitting the carpet.

My poor cat is standing on the island of carpet, glaring down at the water because its encroached on his territory. The other cat is nowhere to be found, long having retreated under the bed. I say “Oh FUCK!” about five times, as I’m tearing my pants and socks off to get to the damned valve. I do eventually shut it off, and the water stops flowing, but I realize quite quickly that the water is seeping into the walls, the carpets are absolutely soaked, so I throw those in the tub.

My mother decides to be sparse with the towels when I ask her for them, and comes back with about three and a sponge mop that is utterly useless (I have a large bathroom and if you can imagine, about half an inch of water throughout the entire thing, then through some of my bedroom). I was not in the mood for it at the time, and wanted to just tell her to get the fuck out and let me deal with it. But she helped me, and eventually did get more towels after I threatened to use paper ones.

Anyway, I’ve learned to hate/love toilets. If they’re not overflowing on me for no reason, they’re spewing sewage in the backyard or filling up my bathroom with water. At least it wasn’t shit though. Wouldn’t that have sucked? Unfortunately, the water did get far. My dad went under the house to check when he got home, and found that the liner beneath the insulation was filled with water. I’m sitting under the porch with a flashlight and I can hear the water when he cuts a slit in the plastic. Sounds like someone turned the sink on. But he says it can dry out now, and nothing should go wrong or anything, since it isn’t just going to sit in the insulation; its free to drain out. Uhg. I’m just glad I knew there was a valve, because I confess…about a week ago…I didn’t know there was one. Ha. That would have been interesting…. Sad, yes, but I’m young, give me time.

Missing.

Usually I try to ensure that even if it’s the dead of winter, I get outside. I tend to go stir crazy being indoors all of the time, trapped in a square with nothing but the same stimulus over and over again. Just a blasting television, a stereo playing something, a small heater running, and about ten projects splayed out in various places. My desk is such a wreck that I’ve given up on finding anything. I throw my scraps of notes all over it, then snatch at them later when I need them for reference. I tried keeping a journal full of them, but eventually, that too got lost, under the pile of doodles, all the sewing machine paraphernalia (one of the ‘projects’), and all the random paint tubes that get scattered around by my cat.

He just leaps on top of it all, fairly unconcerned with whether or not he is thoroughly destroying everything. He’s cleared a spot by my computer by shoving everything out of the way. He sits there staring, literally for hours on end. Looking at me. I feel like I’ve said this before. The cat doesn’t even lie down, just sits there uncomfortably. Every time I look over (which is usually unintentional, as I’m searching for something), he meows. He’ll then wait for me to make eye contact, and if I do, he continues to meow like we’re having a conversation. My mother keeps asking me if I’m talking to someone. Yeah. I’m talking to the fucking cat sitting on my desk, watching me.

But I’ve been sleeping so much, today I finally got fed up with myself, got dressed, and finally went for a walk after about a month-long absence. I think it was driving me crazy, being inside. Feeling trapped, caged, with the same people day after day. There’s a worn trail on my carpet right in front of my television where I pace like something gone mad. Hours. Pace, pace. That habit hasn’t stopped, no matter how much I’ve tried to work on it over the years. It keeps getting worse. But it helps calm me down. My mind goes and goes and goes, never stopping. I can’t find solace, I can’t find rest, so I wear my body out in an attempt to shut my head down. I’ve taken to using allergy medication to get myself to sleep lately, because I’m sleeping so much my body doesn’t want sleep. 14 hours is too much, for anyone. I’m trying to sleep it all away, I think. I’m hoping that each time I wake up it will be a different reality, a different mood.

There’s days when I wake up and do feel different. Maybe I went to bed hopeless and I wake up feeling…alright. Not so much a mess. More clarity. I’ve also discovered that I can go without sleep, something I’ve been toying with. My thoughts turn off a little when I’m extremely tired, something I dread, and something that I never thought I would try to do intentionally. But now, I want them off, I want nothingness sometimes, because I’ve gotten used to it. I’m getting addicted to numb. It’s so much easier when there is nothing to think about. None of it matters at those times, and that is both something to enjoy and something to loathe. Sometimes it is beautiful to look at what you treasure and for it to suddenly mean absolutely nothing.

But the woods were missing. I missed them. It was 16 degrees and windy, but I felt a lot better after disappearing for a long while. I keep forgetting I’m not just something automated, that I am something alive. I have to be out in the cold, dry air and feel it sometimes. I can’t just go by memory, as much as I want to. I have to have those short little glimpses of something not this, something not so rigidly controlled, or I start to go mad. I forget it’s there, then all I see is gloom.

The heartless are always cold.

There’s something about being trapped inside a house that is both damaging on the brain yet at the same time, something that builds character. There’s a lot of snow. Enough that I won’t be leaving the house anytime soon. Normally, I’m one to absolutely content being indoors, but like all animals, I like to ‘prowl’ so to speak. Wander out into the woods with the option of never returning. The one thing about bad weather is that it also prevents other people from leaving the house, namely the people you live with.

I had one of those incredibly lonely days yesterday, the kind where I feel so hopeless and alone that it actually penetrates my numb barrier and physically hurts. I love being alone; I live for it. But every once in awhile I have one or two of those ‘days’, the irritating, human kind. It makes the monster in me snarl, and it causes me to crawl even further back into this black hole of nothingness. Those are always the worst days, because it makes me vulnerable, suddenly. The smallest criticism and I am on the verge of cracking, because what little confidence I had goes flying out the door without a backward glance, leaving me to fend off attacks with absoultely nothing. Needless to say, that is when it cuts the deepest.

My one companion my damn cat, he might be sick. He’s lost a few pounds (which I know is a hell of a lot for a cat), and is literally starting to get skinny, which is quite an accomplishment. I keep getting paranoid and hoping it isn’t a tumor or something. But he’s old too, (about 10), so maybe he is just slowing down a bit. He has been a lot pickier about food, so I’m thinking too that he might have lost some weight because he wasn’t eating what I was giving him (it’s hard to tell; other cat gobbles up the rest). I changed the food, and now he’s meowing and complaining less. I’m not going to jump to too many conclusions; I will just wait it out and see.

My mom is on memory medication. Her short term memory has declined lately, worse than it was before. She’s forgetting things one minute to the next, and I’m having to constantly remind her of things. Even when I do, she often still forgets. It could be from her head injury from before, or it could be something else (her grandmother had Alzheimer’s). They don’t know, and we can afford to go and have her checked out anyway. And the pills aren’t working so far, which is disappointing.

I’m very cold about it all, to the point that I’m sickened with myself. I should feel bad for her, but I don’t…I just feel…nothing. I want to be there to help, because she gets frustrated a lot with all of her problems (her hands don’t function well, and she often gets quite mad about it, along with many other side effects of her injury). But when the time comes, I stand there for a second then just walk away, like a wall of ice. I freeze up in a mental sense, feeling irritated with her for being irritated. Sometimes I even get mad, and just say something insensitive, without remorse (something along the lines of ’so? get used to it’, or ‘don’t get angry’). I don’t even feel it now, thinking about it, though I know I should.

I’m cutting myself off, more and more. Half the time, I don’t even know it is happening. My parents want to go visit my godparents around Christmas to see them and everything, yet all I can think is ‘can I stay home?’. My godparents are pretty good with me; I know they care. But for me, I just can’t extend the feelings required. It’s so fucking difficult that I can’t explain it. It’s there for my parents because I’ve been with them so long (and that, as you can tell from this entry, is limited in and of itself), but with everyone else I can’t feel shit. I can’t even care. I know that sounds impossible, but honestly, it’s almost like trying not to be mad at someone who royally fucked you over and made it blatantly clear that they don’t care that they did it. It’s just too damn strong to fight much against. There is just numb, and it doesn’t want to be shifted, so I can’t shift it.

I’m cold on the inside, apparently.

Satan’s dog is…a border collie???

Today seemed to be dog day; I ran into dogs EVERYWHERE.

So there’s this dog…. I think it’s a he, though I have no proof, as his coat is too long for me to make any…certain conclusion. For the sake of easiness and less confusion, I’m just going to call it a “he”. Anyway, like the title says, he’s a border collie. A strange border collie. I’ve met a few border collies here and there, and have found them to be some of the most obnoxious and irritating dogs, likely because all the one’s I’ve known have been owned by people who didn’t seem to understand that this specific breed of dog needs A LOT of exercise, or else you’ll end up with a psychotic, chewing, excitable mess. It’s a working dog, not a couch potato.

He pretty much stays locked up in a pen all day. It’s basically a chain-link fence with some weeds and a small dog house. But this dog…he never barks. I walk by and his head just follows me, but he doesn’t get up and he doesn’t show any sort of concern. Weird, considering dogs generally don’t like me and come after me if I so much as glance in their direction (gee…I wonder why?). But he never does anything, he just watches. I’ve tried in vain a couple of times to get him annoyed, and have only succeeded once in getting him to bark rather boredly, then lay back down.

For a long time I just thought he was non-confrontational or something, or that he just wasn’t interested in people. Today…kinda changed that. I had to sit back and ask myself, “is this dog human?” We’ll get into that later…. The point is, I’ve always thought he was a bit…off, which is probably why I’ve always had an interest in him when I have a tendency to indescriminately hate all dogs. Cat in a past life, maybe? Well whatever it is, this dog is…different. He stares like a person does, like he’s thinking about something, sizing you up maybe…. Quite frankly, the way he looks at people is just fucking weird…. Not dog-like in the least.

Today I get back from my walk late, and just had a bit of a scare when I saw a car nearly run over a black cat (my cat can’t get run over; he’s indoors, but I still have a soft spot for all the black kitties out there…), when I’m making my way toward the house that that dog lives at. I have my sunglasses on still even though it’s dark, so it’s hard to make things out well from a distance when the world around is shutting down into night. But I definitely see something.

The collie comes up to the fence when he sees me (odd behavior right there for this particular dog), and I can see he has something in his mouth, though I can’t tell what. I walk a bit closer, trying to see what the hell it is, because I could have sworn it wiggled. I had originally thought it was a dog toy, but most of those don’t move like a living thing. He drops it when he gets closer to me, and I approach the fence. I still can’t tell what it is; it looks like a little furry blob of something (I’m still thinking dog toy), then it moves. His paw goes out and steps on something, I realize, a tail.

The squirrel is trying desperately to get away, but the collie has it pinned with one foot and is just looking at me with the strangest blank expression. Normally I have no pitty for squirrels; I hate the little fuckers and use them for target practice when they piss me off. Not just that, but I enjoy watching other animals hunt, I think it’s fascinating. But for some reason this squirrel strikes me as an underdog, and I have a thing for underdogs, perhaps because I’ve always been one, the weaker, unlikely thing that claws its way along in life. It’s really struggling to get away, even though from what I can see it’s totally mangled. I say to the dog, “Hey!”. He sidesteps, still watching me with his odd non-dog expression, and the squirrel is freed. It limps pathetically away, and I can see that its tail is bent like a piece of wire, completely snapped. The border collie looks at the squirrel then back at me. He whines that funny whine, its a mix between playful and annoyed. The squirrel isn’t getting very far; he’s done for as far as I see it, though I give him brownie points for trying so hard. And the collie makes that weird noise again, watching me, and turning his head as though to ask me if he can just get down to business and eat the squirrel I’d so rudely told him he couldn’t have.

I walk away from the fence and decide to just let him have his fun. I’m fairly sure the squirrel was in the pen still, because he sure wasn’t moving fast. That dog is probably gnawing him all to hell now…haha. Now that I think of it, I probably shouldn’t have interrupted him at all. Chances are he must have caught that squirrel…and I say if you can catch it, you can have it…. Squirrels are quick as hell, you have to be fucking good to be able to get one of those. Either way though, there is something not quite normal or right about that dog…. If he was a dog at a shelter, I’d take him home for sure, and that’s saying something coming from a cat-loving-dog-hater.

The annoying dog.

I’m pretty fed up with him. It’s getting to the point where I hate the fact that he’s still breathing. I’m a bit strange about animals, and though I said I wanted to be a vet when I was a child, I know now although I care for animals, there are some—just like certain people—that the world would be a better place…without.

Dogs are a species that I can barely tolerate. Animal racism if you will. The sniffing of asses, crotches, shit, and every other imaginable thing—not for me. My cat may use his tongue for toilet paper, but at least he doesn’t try to share his siliva with my mouth. I think that’s what I hate most about dogs, the accursed licking. My cat licks me, sure, his little attempt to groom me, but he refrains from licking my face unless he is trying to seek revenge by licking and then biting my chin for some minor indesgression (such as giving him too tight a hug). That I can handle, but Malcolm, the dog, goes STRAIGHT for the mouth. This is after he was just outside, his nose all over the nice present some random dog left in the yard, or after he finished grooming his undercarriage for five minutes. No thanks. No really, no thanks.

I don’t care if he’s cute, I don’t care if he has big eyes and a misproportioned head…cuteness does not buy my affection. Actually, pretty much nothing but evilness does, but that’s beside the point. The fact that everyone LOVES him on sight is…well…disgusting. It’s like how people treat other people: according to their looks. Just because it’s cute doesn’t mean that it is sweet or loving.

What problems do I have? The fact that he’s stupid. I honestly am beginning to question whether or not he even knows what his name is. I won’t judge an animal for being a little dim-witted, there’s nothing wrong with that, but this dog…. I say Malcolm ten times and he continues to lay on the floor. The only way he’ll come to me is if I’m near the door. What’s strange about this is that he is like a shadow, won’t leave your side for hardly anything, yet he doesn’t come when you call him…hmmm…. He’s not deaf either, he can hear just fine. My cat comes running to me if I call him any assortment of nicknames (i.e. Fatboy, Fatso, Say-Say, Kitty, Cat, Bastard), yet that damn dog won’t come for “Mal” or “Malcolm”. I just don’t get it. Salem (the cat) even knows what “stop stalking the dog” means. And then the other thing. Potty trained? No, more like “mills around outside”. The mosquitoes are terrible, yet Dad takes the dog out every night, sometimes with NO result. He won’t even pee sometimes. And the other day after we took him out, he got flustered by the ferret (who by the way, officially refuses to take shit from the dog anymore) and pissed on the floor. He’s a wuss. Can’t take anything. I’m used to the excessively mean, don’t-take-shit-from-anybody chihuahuas I had when I was young. They didn’t like, you they bit.

The lino in the bathroom is slowly being destroyed as well. He rips it up again and again in a bid for freedom. He stays in there until I get up to let him out, he has food, water, toys, and bedding, yet does nothing but sit by the door digging at the lino and WHINING. He doesn’t eat until AFTER I let him out. The tape we keep applying to the doorway to keep the lino down he tears up into tiny pieces, even after we attempted to foil him by coating it with hot sauce (yes we really did, because we got sick of fixing it, and it getting worse and worse). Then when I DO let him out, all he does is sit on the rug by the door for hours on end. How exactly that is different from being in the bathroom is beyond me.

He’s not that bad of a dog (believe me, we’ve had some terrors…I don’t even want to think about it…), but I am already sick to death of taking care of him. He’s useless, dumb, and too clingly. He climbs all over me like I’m a moutain, and has to be in contact with your body if you’re sitting on the couch or lying down. I get that I’m supposed to like that he likes people, but I don’t. I’m an incredibly unaffectionate person…I don’t like being touched or hugged or kissed by any animals (human beings included). My wonderful hangups…but anyway, it’s like my mom in dog form (probably why he’s HER dog). I payed for him. Bought him for her because I knew she was lonely. I’m not exactly pleasant company all of the time, I know, so I figured the dog would help, but all of the problems he causes, especially with the cat (he tried to bully the cat in his first weeks here, and now Salem HATES him, and attacks on sight) make me regret my choice sometimes.

Yes, I realize that I whine and bitch about stupid things. And I don’t have problems and blah blah blah, but I have to vent it, or else it will just keep irritating me to an extreme. I have no respect for tiny little dogs who think they’re rottweilers, yet won’t even stand up to a cat. I guess that’s what I hate about him; he reflects weakness. And I despise weakness. He’s like all of those people I hate: submissive and codependent. It’s highly unfortunate that I’m stuck as sole caretaker for the next few weeks, if not month. *grumble*