And So It Begins

The ladybugs are back.

Whitney's Haven for Unpleasant Creatures

I feel like someone, somewhere, put out an ad or something telling every creature no one likes to come live at my place. Perhaps something like "Do humans hate you? Are you scorned and threatened everywhere you go? Are you extremely annoying? vaguely creepy? messy? destructive? just plain inconvenient? Then we have the place for you!" In fact, there may even be some sort of underground railroad type situation going on to bring every unwanted or looked-down-upon creature on the planet to my dad's house, my pig barn, or my dad's shop (where I store my pig food, hay, etc.). I wouldn't even mind having them around, if they would just not be assholes about it. Sure, come live here. I don't give a shit, and I promise not to kill you. Just don't make my life difficult. But no! They move in, make themselves at home, and then decide to see how far they can go.

We are particularly overrun with mice and bugs (especially spiders. Holy shit! So many spiders!). Personally, I think mice are adorable; I don't mind having them around, but when they start shitting all over my house or.... OR giving birth in my pig food bags! (yes that actually happened) they become much less adorable. I also don't really have a problem with spiders, unless they build their webs across every doorway and also across every path I take between the house and the pig barn, right about eye-level so that I end up with webs stuck to my face! in the dark! so that I can never really know for sure whether or not there is a spider on my face!

I'm pretty sure they got the idea for the ad from Doyle.

P.S. All of our domesticated animals are obnoxious as hell too, just so you know. 

 

Luck or .......Something Else?

Yesterday, a client was telling me about all of the times he had been in the emergency room. I'm really not sure how we ended up talking about that, but it was a rather interesting conversation. After he had gone through this whole list of different injuries and whatnot, I said that I had never been in the emergency room (in fact, I've never been in the hospital at all). He said "You're really lucky." and I was like "Yeah, I guess I am." but the truth is, I think luck had very little to do with it. I'm fairly certain the fact that I have never been in the hospital is due to a combination of taking excellent care of my health and extreme stubbornness.

As I have mentioned, many times, I don't get sick nearly as often (or nearly as badly) as other people. I also think that, on the rare occasions (or the more frequent occasions from back before I was so concerned with being healthy) that I have been much more calm about it than a lot of people. When I was young, I used to get sore throats a lot, and the doctor wanted me to get my tonsils taken out but my parents and I decided against it, and it worked out just fine. There was also the time, back when I was at WVU, when I had a sinus infection for like months and my mom swears that, at one point, it looked like one of my eyes was bulging out of the socket. Again, it eventually went away. I mean it seems to me that in most cases, people get sick, then they get better, why bother with the hospital?

There have been times in my life though, when the sane thing to do probably would have been to go to the emergency room. I know there are plenty of times when I probably should have gotten stitches. There was that time, when I was a kid, that I stepped on a rusty thumb tack and a couple of days later my foot got all red, and swollen, and hot, and I had red stripes running up my leg. There was the time I drove my car off a bridge; I wasn't actually very injured (aside from the air-bag burn all over my face), but I just feel like most people probably would have gotten checked out anyway. There was the time, not so long ago, when I punched a door and got that huge, bulbous, fluid-filled knot on my hand. It turned out to be fine, but at the time I thought I might have permanently ruined it. Not to mention the big, weird, knobby thing that's always on my hand.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not so much "lucky" as I am an exceptionally healthy dumb-ass. Plus........

So This Is Christmas

Sorry there was no post yesterday. I just don't find the holidays particularly inspiring. Also, I seem to have a cold or something, which never fails make me lazy and pissed off. I mean seriously, I'm not supposed to get sick. I'm supposed to be some sort of super-human creature who is completely impervious to all disease, or so my brain keeps telling me. Aaaaaanyway, I suppose it hasn't been such a bad holiday. Yesterday, I sat around and watched Dark Angel with my dad and then Supernatural with my mom, and it's looking like about the same thing today. Also, there's a new Doctor Who tonight, so that's cool.

We just finished watching the Dark Angel episode where baby Jensen Ackles plays a super-soldier/serial killer with a thing for teeth, which is an excellent way to get into the holiday spirit. Merry Christmas to all! 

That's Just Charming

Well, I made it through my two days of work with my fucking cold. It was not fun, but I survived and now I'm off for the next three days, yay! I actually felt a lot better today, but I sounded like complete shit. My voice decided that it would be really amusing to alternate randomly between deep and raspy, and super high-pitched and squeaky, and then to occasionally just cut out altogether. Then I tried to sing along with the radio, in the car, on the way home and gave up when I found that it was so bad that it hurt both my throat and my ears. I really hope what happened last time I had a cold doesn't happen this time. For whatever reason, I got a cold, it went away, then I proceeded  to sound like I had been smoking since I was five for upwards of a month.

I kind of sounded like her, only worse. 

Illness Induced Metaphors

As far as I'm concerned, one of the only perks of being a cashier is that you have almost no responsibility. You see, cashiers are sort of like light-bulbs; the job they do is necessary, but the individual bulb is basically meaningless. One burns out and you stick any other one in it's place. They are interchangeable and easily replaceable. This relieves the cashier of any sense of obligation. They push their little buttons and count their money and then go on with their lives with no concern for anything else that happens in the store. This being said, you would think that if a cashier say, has a cold and just wants to call off work and sleep all day she should be able to do that, yeah? No. Not me. I knew I was supposed to close by myself tonight so I had to go anyway, because I really didn't know what they would do if I didn't.

I Am Human

It seems that I may have a cold. I am more bothered by this than I have any right to be. You see, I have this need to convey an image of invincibility. I'm not sure how many other people buy into it, but I usually manage to keep myself pretty well convinced. Veganism keeps me healthy; I'm fairly certain this is the first illness I have had in at least a year and I'm still not even entirely sure that's what this is. I mean I am surrounded by allergens of every shape and size all day long. My workout schedule keeps me strong, and I compensate for any lack of strength I may have with pure stubbornness. And my high pain tolerance and lack of concern for my own safety give me the distinct feeling that nothing can hurt me. That is, until I get a fucking cold! Then I realize that despite my best efforts (and my best delusions) I am still just human after all. Alas.

Fuck You Too, Sink!

 Even the most mundane aspects of my life have to, for some reason, turn into these huge ordeals. Most people probably don't know this, but working at Goodwill makes your hands incredibly gross. There is some sort of black crud that builds up on the hangers ( I refer to it as "hanger goo")and, by the end of the night, my hands are completely coated with the shit. So, right before we leave for the night, I always go to the employee bathroom and wash my hands so I don't have to drive home with black stuff all over me. Well the automatic sink in our bathroom has decided that it can just come on or not come on as it pleases. So for the past several nights I have; put soap on my hands, lathered them up thoroughly, tried to rinse them, tried to rinse them again, ultimately fought with the sink so long that I finally gave up and went to the customer bathroom (with soap dripping off of my hands), at last gotten the soap rinsed off, found that all of the other employees were standing around waiting for me so we could leave for the night.

Our sink isn't actually one of these; it's one of the motion sensor ones, but I feel like our sink and this sink would get along quite well. 

Back! Back I Say!

Well, work today wasn't quite as terrible as I expected. It was boring as fuck for about two hours and then completely crazy for the rest of the day, but ultimately it was okay. My biggest problem was that for some reason I decided that, even though I got up at four, I didn't really need to take any coffee with me. Mistake! Also, some old woman informed me, while I was ringing up her stuff, that she had just puked in our bathroom. This caused me to 1- be incredibly glad that I didn't have to clean the bathrooms, 2-have a nearly irresistible urge to run away from her and 3- want to disinfect everything in the store (including myself). Instead of doing those things I just tried to convince myself that she was simply old and sickly (which she obviously was) and not contagious, then I went and washed my hands for about five minutes.

In my mind I was definitely doing this at her. 

How Did........Where Did......What?

Alright so for some reason, that is beyond my comprehension, I have this odd tendency to get other people's hair stuck to me. Like, not just the hair of people I have been in close contact with, but strangers' hair. I literally walk past people in a store and then hours later find their hair stuck on my clothes, on a regular basis. It's like I'm overly statically charged or something. Anyway, I've actually gotten somewhat used to this vaguely disturbing phenomenon. Well today it escalated quite drastically. I had just gotten out of the shower, where you would think any stray hairs would have been washed away, and I found a long hair stuck to my leg. It was at least 4 or 5 times too long to belong to me. Then I picked it off and held it up to the light and noticed that it was, get this, blue! Like TARDIS blue. How in the fuck did a long, blue hair get stuck to my leg while I was in the shower? I don't even know anyone with blue hair.

Oh So We've Moved on to Biblical Plagues Now, Is that It?

You know how I said I was cursed? Well apparently my curse is expanding to include new and more creative forms of torture. Don't believe me? Well get this, somehow, my car has become infested with cockroaches. That's right, cockroaches! First of all, let me just say that while it is true that my car is very messy I do not now, nor have I ever, had any food in my car. I don't EVER leave anything remotely edible in my car, which I know many people do. I have absolutely no idea how or why they would have ended up in my car, there is  no reason for them to be there, NONE. Secondly, I would like to say that there is no other creature in the world that would disturb me more by choosing to inhabit my vehicle. I would honestly be less bothered if my car was full of bees, spiders, snakes, or fucking grizzly bears! I don't know why I'm so bothered by cockroaches, but I am. Anyway, I abandoned my car next to the pig barn with the windows open, in the hopes that they will leave of their own volition but I'm half afraid that I'll go back tomorrow and find my car completely overrun. I may just have to bun it. I'm fairly certain they're just sitting in there right now doing this.....

Forever Alone

As I have mentioned before, I have realized that I am most likely never going to have a successful relationship (in fact, it's starting to look like I am never going to have any kind of relationship ever again). Well, here's why. The things I would need in another person are things that simply don't exists within the same person. I would need someone who had so many conflicting traits that his/her head would most likely explode. For example, I need someone who;

1. Is damaged enough to understand me, but not too damaged to function (this is a VERY fine line).
2. Understands that it is possible to simultaneously hate people and feel compelled to help them.
3. Is adventurous, possibly to the point of stupidity.
4. Understands my germ issue.
5. Is willing to put up with my poorly behaved animals.
6. Cares about health/fitness at least somewhere near as much as I do. .
7. Has a twisted sense of humor.
8. Doesn't care about having nice/expensive things.
9. Wants to make the world a better place.
10. Is at least as much of a guy as I am (I'm sure this sounds weird, but it is surprisingly difficult. If I ended up dating a girl, this wouldn't be as much of an issue but I still couldn't be with some winy bitchy girl. I just couldn't handle being the guy in a relationship with a guy though.)
11. Doesn't do any of that cutesy shit. I can't stand that.
12. Can have an intelligent conversation without trying to prove anything.
13. Doesn't need too much reassurance (not because I don't want to be reassuring, but because I'm not good at it.)
14. Has a weird sense of style, or at least doesn't mind that I do.
15. Is not overly emotional.
16. Accepts the fact that I am overly unemotional.
17. Is as tough as me (once again, not as important for a girl but still important.)
18. Shares, or at least understands, my taste in music, TV, movies, etc.
19. Isn't terribly disturbed by my sometimes self-destructive tendencies.
20. I love and loves me back ( I guess that's the big one, huh?)

So I would say there's what? Maybe a 1% chance that I would ever find anyone like that? Then you add in the fact that the person would HAVE to be vegan (or at the very least vegetarian, and willing to go vegan) and it drops to 0. So yeah.

Trapped

Periodically it suddenly hits me that I am probably never going to get out of my current situation. I keep convincing myself that things are going to get better, that I am going to find a job that I actually like, that I will be able to afford my own place, that I will have a real social life, etc, etc. Then I realize that is never going to happen. Then, just when I think I am just about as disappointed as I can possibly be with my life, things completely go to shit. Today, I was trying very hard to ignore how much I hate my life. Then, immediately after I got out of the shower, I had to scrub a huge pool of cat piss off the floor, twice! Not only am I entirely  trapped in my shitty life, I am trapped in my shitty life and constantly covered in something disgusting and germ infested. Fan-fucking-tastic!

Productivity

So I actually had a semi-productive day today. I wrote two pages on one of my school papers. I cleaned my nasty-ass carpets (which meant first fixing the belt on the vacuum cleaner. That was a bit of an ordeal), I cut and dyed my hair, I did laundry and best of all I watched two episodes each of Merlin, Doctor Who and Supernatural. That's right, that counts as productive for me.

New Rule. From Now on I'm Always Keeping an Extra Toothbrush.

I have this incredible knack for doing things to inconvenience myself in every possible way. Tonight, I came home, fed the pigs and then actually took a shower early. So I get out of the shower, pick up my clothes to get dressed, bump into the basket containing my toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash and knock all of these things to the floor. Well, I knocked the toothpaste and mouthwash to the floor; my toothbrush landed directly on the toilet brush. Had it landed on the floor, I might have been able to deal with it, but no fucking way am I putting something in my mouth that has had any contact with anything that has had toilet water on it!  So I had to drive clear back to Mannington to get a new one. Luckily, my sister agreed to walk over to the Rite Aid and buy it for me so I didn't have to go in wearing my sweat pants and with makeup smeared all over my face, you know basically looking like everyone else in Mannington.

What the Fuck Happened!?

I don't know what is going on lately. It used to be that I was terrible at dealing with people but I genuinely enjoyed the company of nonhuman animals. Recently, I swear to god, it seems like every living thing in a fifty mile radius is conspiring to make me lose my fucking mind. There are certain things in my life that always have (and I'm sure always will) caused me a great deal of stress. Recently it's like the whole universe is just feeding off of those things and turning me into this mangled mass of rage, frustration and helplessness. The three things that have been a pretty consistent source of trouble in my life have been; my issue with germs, my difficulty managing my time which causes me to run late for everything and (related to the previous issue) the fact that I am always struggling to get the right amount of sleep. Last night, I was was just barely going to get five hours of sleep. So naturally my dad's dogs wait until I just barely fall asleep and then they start howling, not barking, howling! They do this for about five minutes, then I just start to drift back off and they start again! Then, about an hour before I was going to get up, Riley starts barking. I yell at him to stop and he eventually does. Then we repeat the process three times. So this morning I'm stumbling around like a damn zombie, trying to get ready. I'm standing at the bathroom sink and I suddenly realize that my feet are wet. I look down and the entire bathroom floor is covered in piss! I mean the entire floor. Impala's favorite place to piss has been the towel that was on the bathroom floor. So I moved it thinking that he might use, oh I don't know maybe the litter box, instead? No! He just uses the entire bathroom floor. So now not only am I completely disgusted because my feet are drenched in piss, but I'm also even more behind schedule than I already was because I had to scrub the whole bathroom floor and my feet. Fucking awesome! I wish I could say this was just today, but this has been a consistent pattern for the past few months and it's only getting worse. I don't understand what is going on.  

Where Do I Belong? Where Do I Fit?

At this point in my life I feel like one of the things I want most is just to have my own space. I have been living with other people my whole life and I am just not good at it. I am far too neurotic and weird and have far to strange a sleep schedule to live with anyone else. The germ thing is the biggest issue. No matter how careful I am about keeping certain things clean, as long as I'm sharing a space, things are going to get "contaminated." It's not just that though. It takes me for fucking ever to get ready in the mornings, so sharing a bathroom with another person is a giant pain in the ass. I get up absurdly early in the mornings and have to tip toe around trying not to wake other people up (and I usually fail). I have an infinitely easier time getting going in the mornings if I can play music, which I can't when someone else is sleeping. I fucking hate TV. If it were up to me I wouldn't even have cable or satellite or anything. On the other hand, I can watch Netflix all damn day. I sing all the time when I'm alone and, living with other people, I have to constantly remind myself not to do that. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have a place that really feels like mine.

Despite all of this, from time to time, I think that what I really want is not my own place but to share a place with someone who makes all of this bullshit seem worth it. Probably never going to happen.

Furthermore, I wan to live here. 

*The title is a quote form Being Human and is to be read with an Irish accent. 

Squish

A while back, I mentioned my issue with germs, and I just want to clarify something about that. I am not afraid of dying. I often joke about worrying that I will catch Ebola, or the Plague, or some other obscure and deadly pathogen, but that's actually not what I worry about at all. My fear is not of being infected by something that will kill me, but by something that will make me wish I were dead, which is surprisingly easy to do. I almost never get sick and on the rare occasion that I do I always get a far less severe version of the illness than everyone else (I thank veganism for that). Nonetheless, I absolutely loathe being sick, and any kind of stomach thing will make me pray for someone to put a bullet in my brainpan.

By the way, last line+title=Serenity reference

Germaphobe or Drug Addict? You Don't Know.

So I'm still considering the whole police officer thing, and before I can take the agility test (which, by the way, makes me feel like I'm competing in a fucking dog show) I had to get a doctor to declare me to be in good enough physical condition to take the test. Yesterday I finally went to get a physical. I don't even know how many years it's been since I was in a doctor's office. I avoid them at all costs. Every time I set foot in a doctor's office, hospital, health clinic, any similar place, I become convinced that I am going to contact some horrifying illness. When I show up for my appointment yesterday, I am already on edge. I walk into the building and try to act like I'm not on the verge of sprinting in the opposite direction. To my relief, there is only one person in the waiting room, which indicates to me that 1- less people = less germs, and 2- maybe this won't take very long. I sit in the waiting room for maybe five minutes before they take me in and I'm thinking "Yes! I am going to make it through this after all." Then, for some reason they decide to leave me in the exam room for over an hour! During which time I hear multiple people coming and going. Some of them are coughing, some groaning, and some talking about how they spent the whole weekend lying in bed. Meanwhile, I'm pacing back and forth at around ninety mile an hour and alternately wringing my hands and shoving them so far into my pockets that I'm afraid the seams are going to rip. Plus I'm pretty sure my eyes looked like they were going to pop out of my head. Twice, other patients walked by and looked at me, at which point I realized that they were most likely wondering what kind of pills I was there to score.

Stinky Little Winged Bastards!

The house where I live is completely overrun with ladybugs. They are everywhere! They seem to be especially fond of the upstairs, which is sort of my section of the house. The little fuckers fly at me, and frequently land on me, while I'm trying to exercise in the mornings. Of course I won't kill them, so there's really nothing I can do about it. That's okay though because apparently their life-cycle is pretty short anyway. I know this because their crunchy little corpses keep collection all over my floor. You want to know the best thing about them though? Riley Pug likes to go around every morning and eat the dead ones. He walks around and slurps them off the floor and then makes this god awful gagging noise. I don't know if it's because of that weird smell they give off, or if they get stuck in his throat or what, but it's really unpleasant. (sings) The beeeeeest part of waking up......is your dog gagging loudly the whole time you're trying to eat breakfast.