Haunted Birdhouse

IT'S SUNNY!
So I will go outside and wreck my hands some more gardening...but first I want to show off my very latest little project:


and here's the other side:










Do ya think I could do this on ebay in winter? If I start now I could make a lot of them, all different kinds.

The Year of Bad Decision Making

In Feb 2004 I moved in with a man who lived in Enfield. He moved me into his house by the vanload while I was at work. I found out later his wife had only died 2 months before I met him!

I left a very good job as the commute from Enfield was too long. I took a temp position with a local company. I got sick and was out two days. They let me go. Two days before that, on October 24th, my sponsor Laurie died.

Mike was extremely annoyed with me for leaving my high paying job for the one closer to home. Hmmmmm.

In time I became "invisible" to him - he apparently was having a delayed reaction grief experience - and by December 28 2004 I moved out. I couldn't stay if there was no love. I had nothing to stay for. I left my MoonBeam kitty with him as I was afraid the move would retraumatize her and she was getting picked on by my other cats anyway. I regret that decision a LOT. I miss her terribly. I still cry.

I got my job back - the one I had left. Thank God for the miracles along the way.

I moved in with a girl from AA named Karen who was very sick. It was not a good experience. Within 6 weeks or so she had put her condo on the market and I had to find another place to live. She trashed my computer by file sharing when I was at work and she also turned into the Antichrist. She would stand in my doorway shrieking at me that I was disloyal and that I shouldn't talk to people who didn't like her. I'm a little too old for that shizznit.

I accepted a place in east Hartford with a gal named Kim and after about 3 nights there I realized it was not going to work as she had too many restrictions (don’t do this, that or the other thing) and I was being used so she could save her apartment. I couldn't even let Nini and Aida out of my bedroom, poor things! Again I had to move.

I called my friend Alecia whom I had not seen for a while and then she called me back and offered to let me live with her in her house in East Berlin until I found a place. I was actually ecstatic and very, very grateful.

Left most of my stuff in storage and moved in with her and her husband. We had great fun and I laughed every day. I felt I was healing up from all the trauma that had gone before. I felt rich with such a friend. It was like water on a dying plant.

I had stupidly co-signed on a jeep for Mike and he didn’t make payments on it. I had a friend named Moe drive me up to Enfield one day and I took the jeep and drove off. I sold it to some kid in Kentucky, but not before I had made four payments on the damned thing

I found an apartment of my own within a couple months, but then I was diagnosed with Cancer on 4/29/2005.

Alecia insisted I stay so she could care for me. I told her no initially but then relented as she insisted. I thought to myself "Why don't I try doing it someone else's way for a change?" I should have gone with my first instincts.

I quit smoking on July 4th.

On July 7th I learned that instead of chemo and a lumpectomy I had to have chemo and then both breasts completely removed and the ovaries out. This was because I had a genetic predisposition to developing additional cancer in my breasts and also ovarian cancer.

I developed a bad case of asthmatic bronchitis on July 9th and wound up in the hospital. The ambulance had to come cuz I waited too damn long and could hardly walk much less drive.

I came home July 12th and Alecia was waiting to talk to me.

While I was still barefoot and wearing the clothes I had worn to the hospital she told me I had 3 days to get out. I had no hair. I was still sick and weak. I was only a week out from my second chemo treatment. Alecia got shriller and more deranged. I called the police to cover myself as I was afraid she would throw my stuff out on the street. I was terrified and heartbroken and took my overnight bags and my cats to a hotel for the next 2 nights. The nice man at the front desk let me bring the cats in the back door.

I don't think I have ever, ever cried as much as I did that week.



I had called German, my ex husband and best buddy, and he said it was okay if my cats stayed with him until I got settled. While I brought them to him he suggested I live with him. Being as sick as I was I said yes. By the end of the month we had brought all my stuff here.

I did not tolerate chemo well. I felt like I had been run down by a truck. I had terrible mouth sores, couldn’t eat for the first half, was weak as a kitten, and spent a lot of time sleeping. The second half I had severe bone pain and fatigue, my fingers and toes hurt and I filled up with about 20 lbs of fluid. I had trouble breathing. I could not walk for more than a few yards without having to rest.

Because Alecia had tossed me out and forced me to move, I had to transfer all my care to another hospital as Manchester was over an hour away, so I went to Yale. It was not a good experience.

My time in the hospital after surgery was dreadful. I was so sick from the morphine, and all they were sending me was acidic fruit juice that I could not drink. No one would wash me. They washed only the parts that didn’t need washing. I couldn’t get clean bed linens.

My roommate had loud visitors 24 hours a day and no one made them go home.

I needed solid food after the vomiting and acid and it wasn’t until I could teeter out of bed and down the elevator to the cafeteria that I got some yogurt and turned it around.

I went home a day early.

My heart is on the ground.

Cancer was okay. I'd do it again with a will if it crops up. It's losing a sponsor, a job, a home, moving three times, losing a lover, a kitty and especially the betrayal of a friend that hurts.

I am having a lot of trouble with How To View Other Humans.

I'm not very happy with the vast majority of them. I don't want to be one either. If some of the behavior I see is performed by my species I wanna get transferred to be another species or something. Pushy piggy grabby loud selfish and insensitive...is this just because there's lead in the water where I'm living? Is this a phase in sobriety? Please tell me it is.

Cats, dogs, squirrels and birds are civilized in comparison to what other people do. I'm beginning to think my attitude should be I'd just as soon waste their ass as give them the time of day, except I would get put away for it.

I could put my head back in the hole in the ground and stop watching the news and live in a fantasy world again, where everyone is Good and sometimes makes mistakes. I was crying in one of my dreams , because I wanted no one to be beyond redemption and not to throw anyone out but it looks like it's time to redraw my Map.

I won't trust anyone ever again unless they earn it by taking a bullet or doing time for me.

Meetings set my teeth on edge because I know most of the people sharing are full of shit.

The result of all this is that I don't leave the house unless I must. I have no need or desire to be with other humans save to make my living.

I miss Moonbeam. I’m grateful for German and my job. I'm angry and unstable. I get up and grab a paintbrush and start painting a birdhouse first thing in the morning. I have to paint something. Then I go to work.

I don't know who I'll be at the end of all this. I'm grateful I had health insurance and people who love me. I'm grateful I wound up in a safe place. But what I went through to get here, it pulverized my soul and I feel like I am just doing time here until I die.

And that's why I am nuts.

sneepin

Well well....what was that line about being the king of endless space were it not that I have bad dreams? well the bad dreams are due to an excessively soft bed. Pillows are the answer. Pillows are always the answer.

Cats make sleeping difficult. I suffer from catlap upon sitting down anywhere in the house, and when I lie down I have one in front of me and one behind me so I can't move. Well I could move were it not that they weave their magick which makes me loath to disturb their furry little arses.

Lazy bums. I want their lives. Sleep in the sunshine, eat something, climb the cat condo, sleep some more, eat some more, get coo'd over and petted by some huge human or better yet, brushed, then turn in for some well-earned sleep.

When (if I am stupid enough) I come back to this planet, I am coming back as either a cat in a nice house or a 6 foot tall male. Being a short female sucks.