It can't be helped, really; some things just happen, some things just spiral and compound upon one another and get worse and worse; other things stagnate and become rotten; still other things don't change at all and just suck.
The family dog died yesterday. I mentioned before here in the blog that he was fifteen years old and had a massive, inoperable tumor on his head and jaw, and that the vets said he would have to take it day to day; they'd keep him medicated on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, but that the poor old guy probably wouldn't make it much longer. He made it for over another month after that prognosis; my mother told me that he'd lost a lot of weight and that some days he was better than others; some days he'd eat a lot, some days he wouldn't, etc., but apparently on Thursday night he was having difficulty breathing, and by that point they knew it was pretty much the end. My mother told me that they were taking him to the vet yesterday morning because of the breathing issue, and last night she updated me to tell me that he didn't make it.
No, I don't know the details of any of it; I didn't ask. I don't know what "he didn't make it" meant aside from the fact that he'd died; it could've meant that he didn't make it to the vet or that he didn't make it home or anything along those lines. All I asked is what they were planning to do with him, or if that had already been "taken care of." She didn't say. That may sound like a strange question, but when our last dog died in 2008 (also after I'd already moved out), they took her to a special crematorium, and her ashes are still in a very pretty box in the bathroom closet back home. Every time I visit home, when I need to open the closet door for something (to get a roll of toilet paper or a clean towel out, for instance), I always say hi to her.
To understand the gravitas of the scenario, though, is difficult for anyone who doesn't know me and my family really well; that dog was my mother's baby. There was a long-running joke for years that she loved that dog more than she loved me or my dad, and there was probably more truth to it than joke. My mother and I picked him up on a whim from a pet store in Pittsburgh on July 5, 1998 -- when we were still living in Morgantown, even, before moving up on top of the mountain -- and really, as strange as it sounds, that was the first time I became a "father figure" of sorts to another living creature. Suddenly I had this little furball running around the house that I had to take care of and feed and watch and nurture every single day. He was a furball who would steal your sandwich when you weren't looking and would run off with it. He was a furball who would bash his head into doors over and over until we opened them and let him in (or out). He was a furball who would take off running down the street every single morning after I went to school but before my mother went to work, when she was taking him out to pee before she left. He was a furball who would hear me put my key in the door when I came home from school and would repeatedly yip in excitement until I came upstairs to let him out of his box, as we couldn't leave him alone in the house all day when he was just a puppy.
He was the furball who stood and stared at me while peeing on my bedroom floor as Bill Clinton gave his famous "Indeed I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate" speech on national television. I'll always remember that.
He was the furball who, on the first night we were in the house on top of the mountain and I had to keep him in my room while furniture was being brought in, looked around disdainfully, jumped up on my bed, and took a giant shit.
In his later years, he was the older, fatter furball who laid on his big pillow-soft bed in the corner of the dining room and snored so loudly I could hear him in my room thirty feet away, with my door closed, when I came to visit. If he slept in my room with me when I was visiting (for my room really became his room once I moved out), he did the same thing -- keeping me awake and/or disrupting my sleep on many occasions. I didn't mind. That's who he was.
Yep. That's who he was. And he will be missed.
My parents, obviously, are taking it pretty hard; my mother is taking it really hard, even though she knew it was coming for a long time. My parents still have their three cats, yes, but the dog...he was the prince of the household. And he was treated as such for over fifteen years.
Again, I'm not asking questions; if my mother wants to talk about it, she will. If not, I'm not going to press her on it.
I'm taking it okay, I guess. I mean, I knew he was in bad shape; he wasn't incredibly healthy when I was home at Christmas last year. Regardless, it's much like the situation with my sister, albeit on a smaller, furrier scale -- dead or alive, there's nothing I can do about it 1,000 miles away. That's just the facts. I can care all I want, I can mourn in my own way for the dog or for my sister, but the reality is that neither situation would be different were I there.
Speaking of sisters, my oldest one who I messaged telling her I'd like to talk to her...oh, over a month ago now? She never got back to me. I don't know if it slipped her mind, or what, but again, I'm not going to bug her about it. I can see by her (relatively few) posts on Facebook that she's trying to piece her life back together and move onward as normally as she can, and I admire her for that. As for the rest of that side of the family, communication with them has returned to normal -- which means translation: nobody talks to me unless someone is dead, but they love me and at least care that I exist. Well, except for my father and stepmother, of course.
I am trying to keep my own life somewhat normal, though that's sometimes hard to do. I end my grace period on my student loans tomorrow, and with that will come some sort of change to my account on the servicer's site, I would imagine. I haven't heard anything else from them aside from that automated email -- which wasn't incredibly helpful, of course -- and the clock is now ticking on what can be done to get forbearance granted before the day my first payment would be due -- sometime around finals week. I will log on to the site tomorrow and will see what it says, and if nothing else is helpful I will complete, print, and fax off another (updated) forbearance request to them on Monday from the English department's office, and hope that one gets accepted. If it gets kicked back to me again, I will have to get someone there on the phone, immediately, and see what the hell is going on in their systems, because (again) I very readily qualify for forbearance since I'm so poor.
"If they give you any shit," Parker told me, "let me know. I've got some people you can talk to to get it sorted out."
Ah, Parker. Always the helpful one.
Again, there's little I can do one way or the other but wait on paperwork here and there. In 2013, there should be some way all of this can be done easily and with little issue without having to worry about papers, phones, or faxes. But then I am reminded that this is a loan servicer affiliated with the government (or even part of it; who knows) and I'm brought back to reality.
This morning, almost as soon as I got up, I received a message from Daisy, who was still awake after work -- one of the stones fell out of her engagement ring, and it's now gone. It wasn't the big stone, mind you, but one of the little ones along the sides, which are so deep-set in the ring that it's less noticeable. Still, it's not good, and she was distraught about it. So was I. She loves her ring; I picked it out especially for her from a selection of a lot of different ones, but I'll also be the first to admit that it's not like I spent thousands of dollars on it, or anything.
"I can get you another one; that's not a problem," I said. "Either the same one or a different one."
I still have the order saved in my Amazon history, and the same ring is still available. The problem is that it's only made up to a certain size, and Daisy's finger is one size bigger than that -- which is why she had to get it resized shortly after our engagement. You can see even in the photo that it's a bit tight on her finger.
"I don't want another one," she said. "This one is special to me. It's the ring you proposed with. It's got sentimental value."
"But it's just an object," I told her. "It's a thing. The actual love it represents is what's important."
She knows that, of course.
I'm not ashamed to say that my own wedding ring was purchased many months ago; it's brushed stainless steel (which I love) and it was very, very cheap on Amazon. I'm also not ashamed to say that I'm probably going to order several duplicates of it to keep in storage in case I, like an idiot, lose the primary one. Which, eventually, I probably will.
"I can do that for you too if you want, babe," I said. "Get you, like, three or four identical copies of your ring in case more stones fall out in that one, or the metal cracks/breaks where it was resized, etc."
She told me that eventually that will probably happen, by the way. When they resized it, they had to do it twice because they screwed it up the first time. It weakened the metal, and she's sure that it'll crack or break eventually.
"If I'm going to get another one," she said, "I don't want it to be the same one if it's going to have the same problems. I want it to be something that will last."
"Well, the problem with that is that rings that will 'last' tend to be really expensive, and your fiance is really, really poor."
I'm not cheap (well, I am, but not because of this), but yeah, when it comes to jewelry, this is generally the case. We looked at different rings at varying price levels for an hour or so. She didn't like any of them, even though most of them were very similar to the one she has -- I looked specifically for similar rings.
She showed me the wedding ring she picked out for herself a while back; she loves it, I think it's goofy/gaudy/not solid enough/etc, but it's her ring and she can wear whatever she wants, obviously.
We eventually decided to worry about fixing or replacing her ring later. If I can find something to replace it with, or find a way to replace the stone and hold the original ring together longer, I will, but right now it's not a huge priority for either of us. She later told me that she wants to research whether or not she can get replacement stones, little tiny ones, and stick one in there with a hot glue gun or something -- which would work well enough, I suppose.
To get out of the house this afternoon after WVU's miserable, deplorable loss to KU's godawful football team, I went over to the Dollar Tree. I needed to go anyway; I make a trip over there about once a month, and I get a lot of my stuff there -- trash bags, dish detergent/laundry detergent, razors, deodorant, shampoo, etc. I don't have a lot of money to spend right now as we go into the holiday season, so I put the $46 trip on my Amazon Visa card, which I paid off completely last week. I also needed to get my mind off of things -- between the terrible football game, the ring, the dog dying, and the loans stuff, I needed to do something to occupy myself that didn't involve me sitting around the house and staring at the computer screen, or sitting on the couch staring off into space with more football playing in the background while slowly getting more stressed out and frazzled.
The shelves there in many places were almost bare; I overheard the workers talking about not getting another truck in until Wednesday night, and that it was a big one. Well, I could see that from the shelves. I was able to get most of what I needed and came home.
I cooked and ate a small dinner in silence, in the dark, my mind not really focusing on anything, but also trying to process everything in the world all at the same time. Sadie joined me on the couch, as she's my shadow and has to be everywhere I am. I just let my head lean back against the arm of the couch and stared at the ceiling. So much going on, so little time.
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