More than meets the I

I am at the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2, which my very patient boyfriend has been putting up with very sweetly, and after failing three times I turned it on this morning to try again and JUST NOW -- JUST NOW AT THE FINAL GODDAMN BOSS -- realized I could have used different, much tougher weapons this entire time. *cries* Why do I suck so much!

I am not cut out for these complicated games. :-(

Current position: Comfortably plopped on the floor in front of my Metroid Prime 2 playing boyfriend, in front of newly cleaned couch, about to get some Thai Blend iced tea. Oh yeah.

My car is all registered. The DMV here lets you make appointments, which was nice the first time I had to go in, when they informed me that I would have to get a smog check on my car that is -- count them -- six months old. Huh. So, $60 for the smog check, $26 for the driver's license, and $1,031 for registration including California's bitchy "we don't like you damn furriners so we're going to make you pay a bullshit 'use tax' just for bringing the car into the state" tax. I went back today and finally, after 1.5 hours, managed to get my car all registered. So all of you who did not pity me when I got a class 2 misdemeanor for having expired out of state tags before, are you proud of me now? :)

As-yet-unknown job will start next week, hopefully. Soon, routine will set in, and I have to say I rather look forward to it. Not like do-the-same-thing-every-damn-day-until-you-die routine -- routine like having a regular job, and knowing my way around so I don't keep getting lost (though I've successfully gotten found again most of the time), and having Indian food on Sundays. Yes.

The best part of all this is that I feel like an adult again. These past several months when I was living in my parents' house, I felt like a teenager -- had to request permission for this and that, had to sneak around to have sex when I had it, had to do chores to earn my keep, etc. Now I get to make my own decisions again. I can run around the house in my underwear and have dinner at 9:00 at night if I want to (which may as well be 6 back in AZ anyway; goddamn I hate Daylight Stupid Time). I admit that a big part of being an "adult" is "I get to do all the shit I wanted to do as a kid," like eat ice cream BEFORE dinner (whoa!) if I want to, but it's nice to feel like I'm in control of my own destiny again. And, that soul growth can once again be kicked into high gear, now that I'm out of 17-year-old land and back into proper Midtwentiesville.

Cliff seems to be putting up with me well. We'll see how it goes. ;-)

Hello all, I have arrived, safely and soundly and all that, and I am one happy camper. :)

More soon, wanted to let y'all know.

Happily and so very in love,
Jeannette

Tomorrow: Goodbye Phoenix, hello happily ever after!

I am SO in love and SO excited to head out of here and on to freedom! Everything's back in boxes (hopefully for the last time, for a while at least) and ready to go. *dances*

Wanna take bets on whether I sleep tonight? (No ... Cliff is at his parents' house. Nice try, though.) :-D

Y'know what's fun? When your mom jokes about getting laid, and you realize that probably for the first time she's doing it with genuine girl-to-girl humor and not to freak you out.

Way to go Mom!

***

Another two days of work, and then my Cliff shall be upon my doorstep (mainly because I'm picking him up from the airport so I get to dictate our destination). I haven't been this excited in a long time. Being in love rocks, you know?

I can't help but feel my usual helpings of guilt at this point, though. There are people I didn't get to see and people I didn't get to see enough, because there was always plenty of time to do it, which of course means I never got around to it. All my old Coffee Bean buddies, Melissa, Nikki, Phil. Never hung out with Wynter. Only saw Cynthia what, two or three times? Didn't get up to Prescott near enough -- sorry, Chad. Once again I have spent a significant portion of time in this state and haven't laid eyes on the Grand Canyon. As usual.

At this point I feel like writing about how all that's going to change, how I'm going to DO more stuff and LIVE more and make sure everyone I care about knows how much I care about them. But honestly, I wonder if I will? Will I ever get around to joining an orchestra again? Will I go see the museums (musea?), the aquariums (aquaria?), the concerts? (Concerta? Christ, now I sound like the spell system in RPGs. Cast "introspectaga!" Heh, go read Heidi's blog for more on that.)

Why is it so hard to get off your ass and do the things you dream about? I don't get it. It's nice to think there's always tomorrow but you know, it ain't true. I spent a year in Chicago and visited the art museum maybe three times. AND NOTHING ELSE. I didn't go see the aquarium, I didn't get to any concerts, I didn't Taste Chicago, NOTHING. Man I missed out and I regret that. So I went to Atlanta, and I went to one concert and their science museum there -- maybe enjoyed the city about 20% more than I did in Chicago, but I still mainly went to work and then came home and sat around.

I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to find excuses not to get out and do things. "Oh no I don't have $12 to get in the door." Fuckabunchothatshit! I want to go to the beach whenever I want instead of worrying that I'll get sunburned or that gas is too expensive. I want to gleefully engage in touristy activities and find hole-in-the-wall hookah bars to go meet neat people in. I want to become honest-to-christ fluent in more than one language. I want to belly dance in restaurants and in the ocean. I want to be awesome instead of pseudoawesome. And goddammit I want to WANT these things enough to actually do them instead of constantly, impotently talking about it. My motivation has always been at -16 and I don't know why. I mean to change it ... I always mean to change it. This time, I hope it happens for real.

However, I am still open for advice. :-\

Jeannette walks in the door, having just arrived home from work. The family is sitting around the living room, watching Bill O'Reilly, and the parents are munching on Sloppy Joes.

Price: Where's the Mac n' Cheese?
Jeannette: I don't know.
Price: Well there were FOUR BOXES in there the last I checked, and you're the only person I've seen eating it. [referring to the one box of macaroni and cheese I've had in the last three years which I consumed a month ago.]
Jeannette: I only had that one box.
Mom: Go look again, Price.
Jeannette: [follows Price into kitchen]
Price: [rummaging through pantry] Fuck it. [slams pantry door, goes upstairs, and slams bedroom door]
Jeannette: [reentering family room] What was all that about?
Dad: Well, he wanted mac n' cheese, and there were four boxes, and now there are none, and HE didn't eat them, and WE didn't eat them cause we don't eat that shit, so YOU tell ME where they went?
Jeannette: I don't know. But I do know it's pretty fucking stupid to be yelling and slamming doors over macaroni and cheese.



Yes, I walked in the door, and both my dad and my brother immediately started yelling -- literally yelling, mind you -- at me over macaroni and fucking cheese, to the tune of that smug motherfucker Bill O'Reilly in the background.

Is it any wonder I can't wait to get out of here? Bet you can't wait, either, because then I'll stop posting these bitchfests about my family. :) ONE WEEK to go!

I saw my orchestra teacher from high school yesterday.

I hadn't seen DT in almost ten years. When he knew me, I was just coming out of middle school awkwardness; I was still way pre-boobs, and at the very beginning of our time together I think I even had my braces still on.

I credit DT with being most of the reason I ever got as good as I did on my instrument. He was one of those inspiring-type folks, I think, but it went beyond that for me. You see, I developed this strange crush on him -- it wasn't that I wanted him, it was more that I wanted him to be my dad. I improved vastly on my violin that year, and I think it was all to impress him. I went from being the crappiest player in the orchestra to one of the best. (It was a high school orchestra, so it wasn't a HUGE accomplishment, but still.)

I hadn't contacted DT this whole time because, well, I guess I kinda do feel like a failure that I haven't grown up to be the world-touring virtuoso that people expected me to be. By my senior year of high school I was concertmistress of Saguaro, concertmistress of District Honor orchestra, somewhere up there in Regional, 4th chair in Youth Orchestra, and I even made it to All State. And I got burned out. I graduated, I went to college, I graduated college, and over time I've played less and less until now I barely pick the thing up twice a year. Most of my friends at this point haven't even heard me play; I churned out a "Canon in D" and a bit of Vivaldi for Tim and Kate, but that's been pretty much it. And I never tried to get in touch with DT because I think I felt the most ashamed of letting him down. Not my parents, who paid for all the music lessons, the violin itself, the accoutrements, etc., not my extended family who got me violin Christmas tree ornaments every year of my childhood. Dr. Temme, who spent a year waving a stick and spouting awful jokes at me, and who still, it seems, holds his bizarre place in my heart. I guess we all have that one teacher/mentor figure that gets to us, eh? And some of us just happen to want to be adopted by them. :)

Talking to him last night was cathartic. I shamefully admitted that I never pick up my instrument anymore, and his response wasn't "oh, how disappointing" -- his response was "yeah, me neither." This is the second time in my life I've come across an authority figure years after their authority over me had dissipated -- it's so bizarre to be treated as an equal by someone whose discipline still smarts somewhere in my memory. DT told me of difficulties with the children he works with, of family troubles at home; I told him of my life's limbo and my happily ever after floating sweetly on my horizon. And I got to do the one thing that I feel like I really needed for closure of sorts -- I apologized for having been a weird, creepy kid. :-D He brushed it off, saying if I had been creepy he was sure it had been a compliment (heh), but I dunno. I certainly would have been creeped out if some pubescent girl came up to me in obvious emotional distress and burst out with "I love you." ("I'm flattered" was his response, as I recall. Poor DT.)

Cynthia was actually the one who helped me get up the gumption to talk to him, and by talking to him face my own feelings of guilt, failure, and abandonment as concerns my violin. She said:

I know you were just saying it would have been nice to show him you took those talents to a direction you think he would have been proud of you at. It's just that I don't feel you need to. Hopefully you know deep down within that if that is an avenue you truly have a passion for and want to take, you will take it. And if not, i hope you don't see it as talent wasted, but more as talent redirected.


Thank you, Cynthia.

And Dr. Temme, thank you too, though odds are you'll never read this. Thanks for keeping me at Saguaro; thanks for giving me reasons to want to improve. Thanks for all your godawful jokes and your strangely enduring patience. And thanks for your gracious way of dealing with my awkward declarations, then and now.

I am talented. So I'm rusty when I play; I can still whip the thing out and sound pretty damn great with it when I want to. And that counts for something even if it isn't something I do every day. I sing, I dance, I am still musical. The reasoning behind my first tattoo, now almost a decade old, is still going strong. (Which is good because it's a damn tattoo.) :-D

I think my happily ever after might just have room for an orchestra in it somewhere after all...

Life is great, actually, and on its way to being greater. I play Kingdom Hearts (TRON! Oh the Tron!!!!!!) with my freshly microchipped and collared kitty purring in my lap, things are cool with the family, and the countdown grows ever more exciting as the date of the Big Move (April 22nd) draws ever closer.

Happily Ever After in 11 ...

NOMA CAME HOME THIS MORNING!!!



I found her under a blanket in the shed by our house. She's thinner and missing some hair from her right ear, but she's home and she's okay and I need to stop happily crying and go to work.

Yay, now I can post about fun things again! :)

Thank you for all your prayers, hopes, and well wishes ... they obviously helped!

... Blogger does not have size 52 font, nor (it seems) will it let me post one sentence in one size and the rest of the thing in another. But I don't care. I'm too happy that my little girl is back with me. And she is SO getting a trip to the vet and a collar this weekend. Oh yes.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is great, and I would once again like to point out that Cliff is the awesomest boyfriend in the world.

I am patting myself on the back a bit too much here, I know, but I beat my first boss last night (on the first try, no less!), and several tournamenty things too. This is momentous because I am such an 8bit, 2-button girl at heart ... yeah, I played "God of War" pretty successfully, but it was on easy mode so it doesn't count. I'm playing KH2 on normal mode, which means I am all sorts of rocktastic, using (so far) six buttons like a pro! Woo!

The game is so amusingly Disney. At the beginning you are this character named Roxas, who not only looks nearly identical to Sora from the first game (intentionally so, it has been hinted), but who also looks like EVERY RPG HERO EVER, what with the spiky hair and tough outfit and all. It's comforting that no matter where an RPG story line will take us or how beautiful the graphics become, we will always play a tough, righteous, spiky-haired teenager who never seems to break down and cry at the crazy shit he experiences like any normal kid would. Roxas has this group of friends, and they are SO RIDICULOUSLY FRIENDLY. "I'm a tough teenager and I love my tough teenager friends SOO MUCH! We're gonna be together forever! I'm so glad you beat me in a fight cause I love you SO MUCH! Yay!" It's crazy. (The aforementioned fight was some weird junkyard thing, where the entire town turns out and they are all SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED AND THEY'RE CHANTING YOUR NAME WOW!). And, of course, also comfortingly, the bad guys, two so far, have silver hair. What is it about gray hair that's so eeeeeeevil?

*****

Yes, my cat is still missing (as if I wouldn't post in 52pt bold, underlined, and italicized font if I found her). Today we are making more flyers that don't have the date she went missing on them, in the hopes that she might have been taken in by someone who will see these new flyers and GIVE HER BACK.

I just feel so strongly that she will come back home. I don't know when; I sure hope it's before I head out of here in two weeks. It could just be wishin' and hopin', cause I've certainly been doing that, but I FEEL it, very strongly, and fuck I hope I'm right. And she'll come home, and I'll get her a pretty little collar so if this ever happens again we won't go through all this shit, and she'll get a microchip, and all the lovin' her little kitty self can take ... man I miss her so much. *sigh* See, I'm making a valiant effort to write about other stuff, though. Yay!

Thanks for all of your prayers and well-wishes ... I believe they help. I do.

It sucks.

It's the uncertainty that's killing me, I think. I could cope if I knew she were gone for good, if someone called and said "I'm sorry, I just ran over your cat" or something. I would cry like crazy for days but I would know and I would eventually be okay. This not knowing, this wondering if she's still out there and okay and if she'll ever come home, is really really REALLY fucking me up. I don't know what else to do. Yesterday I walked around the whole neighborhood twice, calling her name and rattling her treats. "Don't give up," say all the lost pet resources, but goddamn, it's so hard when you try as much as we've tried to no avail. What can we do now? When we ask neighbors about her now, their eyes glaze over when they hear how long she's been gone. Dad and Price gave up days ago. And Mom and I continue to walk the neighborhood, calling her name, desperation in our voices, and she could be anywhere, and I just don't know what to do anymore.

In all of my freaking out over my cat disappearing, I forgot to mention one very critical fact: I have the greatest boyfriend in the world.

Said greatest boyfriend in the world, in order to cheer me up because I am having some very bad days lately, bought me "Kingdom Hearts 2" before I even knew it was on the shelves! For those of you not familiar, who are you? Why are you reading my blog in the first place? :) No, it's a game series that combines Disney and Final Fantasy, and y'know, I was skeptical at first (not such a Disney fan) but the first one turned out to be an awesome game, and I am very excited to play the next installment when it arrives.

Still no Noma news. We put out traps again last night to no avail. I don't know what else to do; she could be anywhere. I'm so exhausted. *sigh* If any of your pets don't have collars on them, put one on, please. Do the microchip thing. I am so sorely regretting that my cat is unfindable and unidentifiable. Don't make my mistake, okay? It SUCKS.

Still no kitty. Friday night Heidi came over to help with the Great Noma Hunt (oh, Heidi, you are such a wonderful friend, and I love you so much), and then later we went back to her place to try to escape feeling like shit for a while, and y'know, I somehow managed to ... but then on the way back up to my house my brother called and said "I just saw your cat come on!" So it all started up again; we rushed around like mad, to no avail. Saturday morning we canvassed the neighborhood again (is it canvassing when you're not trying to sell something?). Which brings me to another point:

When you're trying to enlist the help of someone, never ever start the conversation with "how are you?" Sadly, it's an instant red flag that you're an annoying salesperson. I can vouch for this from work -- any time anyone starts the conversation with "how are you today?" rather than "let me speak to _____," they are almost invariably trying to sell me a new copier or courier service or timeshare or pair of socks. So we learned not to do this, which didn't help Heidi. A brief reconstruction of Heidi's events, played by Heidi (H) and someone we'll call Cunt Whore (CW):

H: Knocks on door.
CW: Trying to hold back giant, frantically barking dogs; has to shout over them.
ARE YOU SELLING SOMETHING?
H: No, we lost our cat [points to flyer] and she was spotted in your yard last night.
CW: Well -- is there a reward?
H: Uhh, not really, we're just asking people if they've seen her.
CW: Exasperated sigh, snatches flyer out of Heidi's hand and slams the door.

What the hell, people, seriously.

So, after the morning hunt, we got a call from someone who had supposedly found my cat at Val Vista and Baseline. This, for those of you who are not so familiar with Phoenix, is around 25-30 miles away from where I live. Unlikely, non? But the description matched so well, and stranger things have happened, so we leaped into the car and drove the half hour to this person's house. The face was so similar, the size was right, even the white spot on the cat's tummy was so close ... but the main problem was the GIANT PAIR OF CAT TESTICLES. Yes, this cat had huge kitty balls, and these nice folks, who are used to animals with much larger genitalia such as dogs, told me over the phone "well, uh, I THINK she's a girl, come get her." *sigh*

Our next stop was the Maricopa County Animal Shelter, where I walked down the row containing the cats, looking for my Noma, and cried all the way back up -- not because she wasn't there, but because of all the little kitty eyes staring pleadingly up at me, all these cats who only had one or two days left. The worst ones weren't the ones who rubbed against the gates begging to be taken home. The worst ones were the ones who didn't even bother to get up, who just glanced up sullenly and then went back to staring at the floor, awaiting their fate ... fuck, I can't even think about it. It was horrible. And their best advice was to come back every two days to check and see if someone had dropped her off there. *shakes head* I just don't think she'll end up there, though, because I think the goodness of people's hearts runs out when it involves a) driving 15 miles and b) shelling $20 out of their own pockets to turn the cat in.

So we tried the trap thing last night. Mom and I put a can of cat food in a trap and set it near the area where she'd been seen (so we thought) and sat in the car with the windows down, waiting, waiting, waiting. Kchunk. Rattle rattle rattle. We let a very unhappy gray tabby go, reset the trap, and sat in the car again for almost an hour. Kchunk, rattle rattle rattle. This time, it was a black cat. Was it Noma? Noma's not that big, but I'd never seen Noma so freaked out before, so she could look this big if her fur were all puffed out like this one's was. It didn't quite sound like her, but I couldn't be sure. So we packed this (even unhappier) cat in the car and drove it home, where we could see in better light than flashlights, and it just wasn't her. The paws were too big, the nose wasn't quite right, the eyes were too close together ... and what this now meant was that all the reports of "we've seen your black cat in that yard," etc., could pretty much be written off. Dejectedly, we drove the cat back, only to meet my brother who said he had just seen my cat. Due to the fact that we had a black cat in the back so it at least couldn't have been THAT one, we let it go, confident that it wouldn't head for the trap again, and set it up a third time. And waited. And waited. And the neighbors came home and made a ruckus. And we knew she wouldn't come out with all that noise, so we packed up and came home, and we'll try it again tonight. Jesus fuck it is time for my cat to come home.

*sigh*