2004-08-23 - 12:33 p.m.
Oh my goddess. I got a kitten yesterday. He gets cuter by the freaking minute. He has black stripes and alternates with gray and some tan around the edges. He has perfectly symmetrical designs on his little face and body. He�s ten weeks old and I�ve fallen in love. He likes me best. Shhh, don�t tell the children. He�s so freaking cute. We named him Dexter. He has some fleas though. So I gave him a bath at four in the morning cuz he was sleeping with me. Just like a baby, he wakes up after three hour naps. So, he woke me up at four a.m. after we went to bed at one in the morning. He was itching and scratching and a flea jumped on my neck so I gave him a bath. I didn�t have flea dip or anything professional like that. I just used antibacterial hand soap. Then I got the idea to dab tea tree oil on his strategic spots. He was very good for me. The tea tree oil, if it actually reaches the fleas before they run to another part of his body, actually makes the fleas fall right off onto your linoleum bathroom floor and look around startled so that you can pick them up and drown them down the sink drain. It�s a very constructive process.
I dropped the kids off at school this morning. The girls were late for their first time. I did some phone books that I couldn�t do this past Saturday (I had help from a friend named Billy...old school friend), and then I took Jimmy to his school. Then I went back home cuz I was sweaty and wearing jeans and I took a shower and got an outfit almost free of wrinkles. Then I had to play with my kitty for almost an hour. I got to work an hour or so late. Oops. He�s so cute. I can�t help it.
He loves me, and falls asleep on me. He likes a little bit of milk with his IAMS kitten food. His food smells like shrimps (strimps) that are slightly rotting...very pungent. He eats and drinks or uses the litter box (also kept in another area of the kitchen) and then meows a lot. I don�t know why. Maybe he�s saying thank you. He�s just so cute. But that�s really the only time he meows. He purrs a lot when you pet him or hold him. Well...when I hold him or pet him. I don�t know if he can handle the kids yet. Stephanie likes to be the boss and mother him to death. It calms her down though if she holds him or makes little beds for him around the house. Then she doesn�t beat up her siblings.
Anyway, I�m reading a book called The Feminine Warrior. I can�t remember if I mentioned that in my last entries. It will help with my self-confidence and self-protection and safety and whatnot. A guy wrote it which is strange...but he teaches self-defense classes and became interested in women�s self-esteem building and safety and stuff. He says that usually the women that get victimized have their guard down to a point where they are not aware of their surroundings. Not that it�s their fault for being attacked. I am paranoid so I am constantly looking around and trying to walk tall when I move across parking lots, etc. So, maybe that is why no one goes after me. I�m intimidating.
Jimbo called again today. He was in jail this weekend for loitering and prowling again. A new charge. ANOTHER charge. He wants me back. He wants to work things out. He wants to change. He needs to do a total revamping before I can handle being with him ever again. I�m talking cutting his hair even. Paying off his debts. Never being illegal again. Making more money. Completing rehab and going to meetings every week. As well as giving up a majority of his friends and associates and overhauling a complete attitude adjustment. Going to the doctor for a physical and getting his lungs checked out as well as all his other organs (liver, etc.). He won�t and can�t do all those things so we are done. I know he won�t do every single thing. But that�s the only way I would get back with him. I don�t want anything to do with him anymore. I have to keep sticking to that too. Cuz I had a good weekend not worrying about him and not being anxious and dreading everything. I had a lot of ease about me. He�s just going to go back to that pregnant girl anyway. I know him. She likes him and is willing to put up with him and has just broken up with her boyfriend...so....duh, I wonder what�s going to happen next.
I have a counseling appt. today. I also have to finish my phone books somehow. I can do it. I�m a feminine warrior. Kmmm. I also have a lot of homework to do for tomorrow. And that adorable distraction is waiting at home for me to love and be distracted with. I love Dexter. He�s so frigging cute. He doesn�t look like a Dexter but I don�t think the kids will let me change it again. We went through dozens of names riding home in the car. Baxter, Augustus, Zeus, they thought of Marcus first, which I hate. Mojo, Timmy, Zeke, Zack, Jack, Max, Arthur, Mack, Pablo, and a bunch of others. Chloe kept saying Bubbles and I reminded her that it was a boy. So we settled on Dexter. He�s in a cartoon. A little kid with a Spanish accent that has a science lab in his basement named Dexter. The show is Dexter�s Laboratory. A Cartoon Network thing. I thought the name Dexter was cute. I don�t know. I�ll figure it out.
Sigh. I have to go now. Oh, as far as the hurricane goes...the news is referring to Southwest Florida as Ground Zero. Part of the hospitals in Charlotte County are up and running again. They are bussing kids from Charlotte County schools up to Sarasota to have an extended summer camp. They take them to pools and movies and feed them and have counselors available on hand if needed. Poor things. Little homeless kids with no air conditioning, most of them. Their schools won�t be open for at least another week or more. Our schools opened today, and they are entitling all children in schools to three weeks of free lunch which is really a nice favor. My sister just got electricity but still has no water. Her roof is still leaking and stuff like that. My mom got her electricity back and her phone started working again finally yesterday.
My grandfather was moved to a nursing home. They keep him in a wheelchair all day cuz he�s too weak to stand. They have an alarm on his back so if he does try to stand up it goes off. They have him belted into the wheelchair also. I haven�t visited him yet, but I will eventually. My mom took her mom up there cuz that�s his wife. They brought him flowers from his garden. He wanted to leave. He doesn�t trust the help there. He tells the people that he won�t eat their food or drinks cuz they are trying to poison him. They don�t take nonsense from him though and they make him eat anyway. They tell him they did not poison anything. I could never work in a place like that. Okay, bye for now.
