Up the down staircase

OMG I hate freakin' moving yargh!

So, yeah, it's annoying and horrid, and if you have a cat who was abanoned at a high school in his carrier, he'll probably take three days to even start talking to you again after it's all over, but it's done now. I'm starting to feel better about life. And my drive to work this morning was so completely drama-free as I took side streets from my house to my work, five miles away.

Oh. Yeah. Uh-huh.

I was totally planning on going to work yesterday, but I actually did not have the ability to either move or open my eyes. I called in about an hour and a half after I was supposed to have shown up, and then I went back to bed until about 11 in the afternoon.

Regret it, I don't.

My mom took me out yesterday for a mani-pedi, which I usually find really annoying because I hate people touching my feet, but it was nice to just relax and let someone else do the work. My toenails are all now uniform in size and shape, and painted a lovely midnight-blue, and my fingernails...well, they sort of look like the monster's head from Frankenstein comics, and the middle fingernail on my right hand looks like a rat's been chewing on it since it got stuck between two shelves while I was holding one and the other one came crashing down on it. But...they're good. The cuticles are clean and they're filed and I'm sort of feeling human again.

The inside of the house sort of looks like a hurricane hit it right now, but I'm hoping that I can get everything in order by this weekend. In a strange state of denial about how bad things were, I put the vacuum into the broom closet because that's where it goes, by gum. Sure I have about three hundred books just loitering about the living room and I haven't hung up my over-the-door-shoe-caddy yet, but that vacuum had better get into the broom closet!

Yeah, I'm crazy. But I'm all right with it.

This is the part where we dance (Bollywood style)

I wish I had my friend Cassandra's sense of humor so I could write about my life in a funny, interesting way. I swear, Cass took a Christmas pudding recipe and made it hilarious (French brandy: For export to England only! Ha!) (Cass, I still want your memoire!) (it wasn't the one that went around about drinking rum, either. In fact, Cass was very specific that you do not want to drink the wine that you bathe your pudding in because it is supposed to be too vile for consumption), but I'm not that way. Not being English doesn't help either. I'm just a dull, average American and this blog is slowly heading towards the "breathing in, breathing out" updates that I see on some other blogs.

Currently, I'm at work, not working as is my wont, and waiting to head off to college for another night of fun in biology. I'm praying with all my might that there will be another severed shark's head in the lab, but I can't expect to get lucky every night.

I like my lab partners. They're obviously just in this class to get biology out of the way so they can move onto something else (fashion? I don't know), but they're hard workers, and they're trying to understand what we're doing. I never thought I'd be in a position to help other people with math and sciences, especially after the C in algebra, but I feel really useful in terms of helping them out. And they have strengths as well. I'm dyslexic and tend to not read instructions as they give me a headache, and I almost always get stuff mixed up (when I bake, I do the unthinkable and just go with what looks, feels and tastes right because I just don't do recipes), so they're really good at helping me read the directions right. I wish I could bring them to university with me! (My baking is superb...I don't need no stinkin' recipes.) (I also never make the same thing twice.)

We are moving starting tomorrow morning, and I'm mostly just worried about the logistics of moving all the stuff, and then all the furniture, and then the cat. Poor Mr. Chekhov has been very clingy and suspicious lately. I wonder if his former owners dropped him off whilst moving? He seems to think something bad is going to happen, and it makes me wish even moreso that this was all over. The upside is being on the receiving end of kitty cuddles, and if you own a cat, then you know how few and far-between those things come.

My title came from me thinking all of this over, and realizing that on Saturday, after the old apartment has been cleaned and left behind, and we're firmly ensconced in our new apartment, it would be the point in the Bollywood movie where we would break into some fabulous dance whilst wearing harem pants and having fabulous hair. We'll probably just have to suffice with Netflixing the first season of Downton Abbey, though.

Moments of aggravation

Moving is very emotional. It's really hard to pack up everything and go. And inevitably, you start realizing that there are things you can live without so you have to figure out what to do with them. There's been a lot of shredding, and I've been culling my wardrobe quite a bit and now have a rather tidy pile of things I want to take to charity.

The biggest issue we have right now, though, is a stove. My mom bought a stove for her house back when she owned it, and by god she was going to take it with her when she moved. It would be really simplistic to chalk it up to her being a hoarder, which she is and she knows it, but I think it's more than just "hoarders gotta hoard." The stove was the one think from her house that she was holding onto, and she has to let it go. We have talked about it at length, and she admits that it must go, so I started looking into where we can take it. Unfortunately, Habitat for Humanity can't have it as it's more than five years old, but the Salvation Army could take it, and they also have shelters and whatnot where they can use it to benefit people. Win-win, right?

Well, I don't know what happened, but I had just checked with everything and was about to make the arrangements when she got really mad at me (watch an episode of "Hoarders" to understand the level of upset she fell to) and was like, "You know that's my stove, right?" I said, "Um...yeah, I know it's yours. Do you really think we can keep it?" "No, that's not what I'm saying. You just keep making these plans like it's yours, like you can do whatever you want with it, but it's not yours!" So, I naturally said, "Fine, do whatever you want with it. Get a storage facility for two hundred a month and pay 2400 a year just to keep your damn stove, but leave me out of it." I was just so upset. She started to relent and was like, "I'm sorry, you're right, I don't know...just make the arrangements." I told her that I wouldn't because in five years, I didn't want her coming back at me and yelling about how I got rid of her precious stove.

So, last night she said she knows where we're going to take it...hooray...

Anyway, I don't think badly of her or anything, it was just an aggravation that I needed to vent on because seriously, dealing with the elderly is difficult, and I have to start remembering that my mother, no matter how young I like to think of her, is now a member of the elderly.

Movin' on up (to the north-side)

I'm moving next week! OMGmyhouseissuchamessOMG!

The good news is that I'm moving much closer to work and the rent is several hundred a month lower. The bad news is that I'm moving farther away from my current college. I will be transfering to a CC a little closer to home. And that's okay.

I had a very clarifying situation happen that really helped me see that I am making a change that I will be happy with. I walked into bio lab and there was a severed shark's head in an aquarium (I'm assuming with preservative over it?). I posted to facebook later that I meant to take a picture of it to share (because I thought it was awesome like whoa). My friends' reactions were not along the lines of "Imagine waking up next to that! Haha!" One actually said, "Damn you!" in a sarcastic way while another was like, "uuhhhg..."

And then I realized that I'm exactly where I should be. This is what I want to do with my life. Not maybe look at severed shark's heads all the time, but dealing with animals either in a zoological setting or veterinary setting. It's what I want. It's who I am.

Why I don't want to be a veterinarian

My first college counselor was a very nice, albeit socially awkward woman who thought the best way to "encourage" me to be more was to go into an autistic rant about how "you can do anything, anything you want. You can do more. You don't have to be a vet tech, you can be a veterinarian."

I asked for a new counselor who was a little more sutble. "Is there a reason you don't wish to get a doctorate in veterinary medicine?" she asked. "I don't want to be a veterinarian," I answered. "If I get a doctorate, it will be in zoology." From there, we discussed Cal Poly Pomona and the University of Hawaii and UC Davis, and we were done. "You can do anything you put your mind to," she said. "You just have to believe in yourself. Not everyone wants to be a doctor."

I wonder...if a man says he wants to be a nurse, do people yell at him to be a doctor? Nurses and doctors are completely different, and that's why I want to be a tech, not a DVM. I can imagine that anyone chosing nursing would feel the same way. There's a different connection to nurses.

I love my veterinarian. When my bigger guinea pig was having a foot problem, he was a great person and obviously loved my little boy. It was the tech, however, that I saw the most of. She would hold Woody, pet him, clip his nails, feed him carrots, whatever. I was told that one time when the little one got a cold, the doctor was in the back talking to him in an absurdly high voice, but I didn't see that. The doctors deal with the medical side, and the nurses deal with the human side.

At shelters, the techs are the ones who walk, groom, feed, and care for the dogs. A vet will come in a few times a week, or on an emergency. At a zoo, the techs are the ones that feed and care for the animals. A vet comes in a few times a week or during an emergency.

I want that hands-on part of the equation. I want to be a tech, I want to be a zoologist.

The child of Narcissus

Narcissists should never have children. Ever. They make horrible parents. They view their children as extensions of themselves--apendages that they get to dress and manicure and manipulate--and consequently, the child has a hard time realizing who they are away from their parent.

The story of Narcissus tells about a man who sees himself in a lake and just can't take his eyes off of himself. The child of Narcissus looks into the lake or mirror and sees their parent reflected back to them. Similarly, the parent sees in the child himself, only with flaws. In order to make the child a true reflection, these flaws must be cut out, sanded down, removed and made into the image of the parent, who views himself as a creator.

Many narcisstic parents have a "golden child" and a "scapegoat". The golden boy or girl can do no wrong and is usually as much like the parent as the other one is unlike him. In my family, I was the scapegoat and my brother was the golden boy. However, for some odd reason, it was my brother who bore the brunt of the abuse from our father. He had his "flaws" that did not reflect my dad. They reflected perhaps my mom or a grandparent, or maybe even just his own personality that was slightly off from my dad.

My brother as a boy was a dreamer, a magician, a reader, a player...my dad as a boy was what his parents told him to be. My dad had to work hard because his parents decided to be farmers and live on a farm, and that meant that my dad had to help around the house. Was it any wonder that he joined the Navy when he was 17? And yet he never realized that my brother was looking for as much freedom as he was.

I was the scapegoat, and that meant that everything that happened wrong was my fault. There was also no communication in my house, and I'm a communicator. I like clear, concise instructions that tell me what to do, and this is mostly because whatever it was, I was sure to do it wrong, or at least not to the standards of my father, who would give me ambiguous instructions such as, "mop the floor." Having never mopped a floor before, I botched the job. I used too much soap, the water wasn't hot enough...but was my failure my fault? I was not told or shown what to do. In fact, if my dad was on a quest to get the house clean, we usually vacated the premises because he was a serious whirlwind of activity and aggravation, and he almost always threw away our most prized possessions without asking, or without thought to whether we would want to keep it or not.

I have a Snoopy doll from when I was a baby, and it is all I have from that time. My brother doesn't have anything from when he was a child. My dad would decide we had "outgrew" something, and then it would be gone. It didn't fit his idea of who we were and what we wanted or needed.

We are both currently low-level hoarders, and we have trouble culling our possessions when they start to be too much for the house to handle. I have no doubt that we are this way because our things were given away and thrown away without our knowledge or input.

Being a child of Narcissus is difficult. It takes a long time to unentwine your parents' roots from yours. Time, distance...none of it helps until you sit down and try to untangle yourself. The Narcissus bloom is hardy, though, and likes to try and keep its hold. Your parent will wonder why you're doing this to him. All he ever wanted was your happiness (as long as it aligned with his idea of happiness) and success (as long as it was his idea of success). All he wanted was your love (as long as you didn't expect any love in return).

Being a child of Narcissus means being emotionally manipulated a lot. To this day, my biggest struggle with depression is the fact that I get depressed for no reason. All I can think about are the people in the world who have it off so much worse than I do. This is because any time I wanted something from my dad, particularly affection, I was reminded that my life was relatively pretty good, and that my needs were, well, a little selfish. He would never come out and say that, of course, but that was the message. My hierarchy of needs was satisfied, therefore there could be no want.

Getting untangled is difficult because you think you've done it, you think it's over, and then you look down and somehow one of your roots decided to grow back into the direction of the parent plant. Your own body is betraying you. Your own emotions are still searching for that need to be filled.

One of the worst parts for me is knowing that the void never will be filled. In that way, it's almost like my dad still does have a hold. I still want that love, but I can't have it, only it's not because I'm too selfish, it's because he is.