Cat Names and Unusual Departures

Since the arrival of Dexter the kitten, I've been bombarding the little Englishman with stories about previous cats I've owned. I can't help it, having a kitten again reminds me of all the other times I'd taking care of a tiny little fuzzy thing. So, to spare him some listening trouble, I'm going to impart some of it onto whatever audience I have out there.

Dexter is the 9th cat I've owned. This number isn't high because my parents enjoyed having multiple cats living in their house. It's high because somehow, cats don't last long at the house I grew up in. We always took good care of the cats we had and loved them each but some of them have just disappeared and others have died of unusual causes. I can't really figure it out but our house should be on some Cracked.com list about weird cat stuff.

The first cat that my family had was named Rosie Roosevelt Rainbow Cook. My eldist sister named him when she was about 8. I don't really remember much about Rosie except he had one leg missing, he really liked American cheese slices, and he died in a fucked up way. My parents usually tell the story about me dragging him by the hind legs so I could watch him hop along on the front one and how they had to buy me a stuffed animal version of Rosie to keep me from cutting his hair off with safety scissors. I was three, alright?! Anyway, I was 8 when Rosie died. You see, Rosie was an outside cat. He'd meow at the door when he wanted to get in and did the same when he wanted to roam out in the woods behind our house. One day Rosie decided to wait by the garage door in order to get in, rather than the back door like usual. My mom watched as he came in when she opened the garage door and, as her story goes, when she started closing the door again, Rosie decided he didn't actually want to come back inside and darted for the yard. Rosie didn't make it to the yard because he was crushed by a garage door. Supposedly my mom didn't do it on purpose but she complained about the cat all the time. If you're a parent and you're wondering about traumatizing your kids when telling them about death, try not to savagely murder their childhood pet.

After about a year of mourning (on my sister's part, I was fine the day after Rosie died because I was a sociopathic kid apparently) we decided that it was time for a new cat. For some reason, I decided I wanted to play the day they went to go get the kitten and even though my mom told me they were going right that minute, I figured they would wait for me. Well, they didn't and in my grief of missing out, I kicked my shoe off so hard it hit the ceiling. There is still a mark from where it hit. My sisters and mother returned with two kittens: a black kitten and her orange pile of fluff brother. We named them Cosmo and Elaine after the Seinfeld characters because Elaine was the smart one and Cosmo was literally retarded. It's not his fault though. I'm ashamed to admit this but as I said before, I was a sociopath as a kid, or rather super ADD and stupid when bored. Anyway, one day while in a fit of this ADD boredom, I decided to pick up my cute, sweet little orange kitten and start yelling loud noises while holding him about six inches away from my mouth. I guess I just wanted to see his ears twitch. We figured out fairly quickly after that that Cosmo was deaf. His deafness didn't make him stupid but not being able to properly function and learn because of it did. Elaine took pity on her idiot brother and would catch mice for him so he could prance around proudly with it in his mouth while we climbed on couches to get away from him. Now of the two, which do you think has the survival skills to go outside and not get snatched up by some animal? If you thought Elaine, you are seriously mistaken.

Cosmo and his serious survival skills in action.

Elaine, like Rosie, liked to venture outside. She was a supremely clever cat and would always come back to the house after a couple of hours. She would climb up on the railing of the steps leading up from our back yard and, with an immense amount difficulty given the distance from the railing, tap on the window where she worked out that we would most likely be while meowing her head off. Elaine was also partial to human food in the form of potato chips and became quite fat because of it. This probably made her a tasty treat to a predator in the woods behind our house because one night, she just disappeared. Elaine wouldn't have run away because she seemed to have the impulse to take care of her idiot brother and god damn she loved potato chips. Her disappearance still bugs me because she was probably the smartest cat we ever had. Meanwhile Cosmo would get outside occasionally, revert to freak out mode, and hide under the overhang of our back porch, hissing at us when we tried to bring him back inside.

After Elaine disappeared, we had a run of female cats, all in an effort to control Cosmo and the mouse population of our house. (continued in Part II)

New Kitten!

I have just recently acquired a darling little kitten. (----[tttt48888888888888888qqqqqqqqqqqqq -- she noticed my fingers on the keyboard and had to attack them thus typing the last sentence.) A woman had came into the store I work at and asked me if I knew anyone that wanted a kitten. The little Englishman had promised me a kitten so I jumped at the serendipitous encounter. Apparently our kitten just wandered into their yard on a rainy afternoon and the woman was going to bring her into the house but her own cats didn't appreciate their new found company. The kitten had to stay in the cold garage until the woman took her to the humane society but luckily, we picked her up.

Dexter on her first night at the apartment

Her first duty upon entering her new home was to have the most foul diarrhea in the corner. It couldn't be held against her though, she was scared and we only had newspaper for her to use at the timeWe set up a big box from our futon for her to stay in until we got the place cleaned up and newspaper put down in all the corners. Needless to say, she didn't stay in there long. The first night she was the most cuddly kitten I'd ever encountered. We could barely move because she was either sleeping on my chest or on the little Englishman's shoulder. We only had wet food to give her but she ate an entire can in just that night. I called my friend ( her blog here: Frootroops) for some advice on our little rescue. She told me, among many other helpful tips, to look at the kitten's tummy for fleas. No sooner than I had turned the kitten over did one crawl across her fur. I freaked out so much that I had to get off the phone and try and pick what I thought was just some random insect out of her fur. I quickly realized, however, that my kitten had a pretty serious infestation. I slept in the living room that night so she could keep warm against me while I slept. She woke me up by treading on my with poop sodden paws and batting at my eyelids.

The next morning I scoured the internet for tips on bathing a kitten and took my friends advice on using Dawn dishsoap to clean her. The kitten actually seemed pretty okay with this first bath, barely trying to escape and not howling like cats usually do when they encounter water. We didn't see any fleas on her so I figured I was right about it being just a random bug. We also decided to name her Dexter because at the time we didn't know her gender and said we'll stick with it regardless. Dexter was a bit more playful throughout the day, especially after getting the proper kitten chow mixed with kitten milk. It seemed though that she couldn't quite figure out where her new litterbox and food/water dishes were. Whenever she was cuddling with us, she wouldn't wander over to either for long spaces of time. I was getting a little worried that she was blind or didn't realize that she could eat and go to the bathroom without us putting her in front of either. Thankfully, she's sorted it out since we've had to leave her here when we go to work or school though every once in a while she still forgets where her litter box now is and tries to go where it was previously.

The second bath I gave her was slightly more eventful. We'd purchased a flea comb and flea spray. I started in with the dawn and found that the fleas had wised up since the last bath and quickly rushed to Dexter's face. It is incredibly freaky, if you've never seen it, to watch fleas walk across your pets eyes while you frantically try to comb and pick each one you see out. The little Englishman kept holding her by the scruff in order the get the fleas off her tummy and rinse out the tiny amount of flea spray we used (she isn't old enough for most flea treatments) and I thought the prolonged dangling might have damaged her because she was barely moving while in the towel, not even shaking. She came around eventually but then I made the mistake of looking online about common problems with found kittens and saw something about earmites. Her ears are filled with this dark brown goo and it looks just like all the reference pictures on the internet. I knew at this point that we needed to get her to a vet as soon as possible.

Most cats, especially kittens, hate driving. Hate. We had a cat that would hide under the seats when we took him to the vet and we had to pry him out from his safety spot with all our might. Little Dexter, however, seemed to really enjoy it. She sat perched on the little Englishman's shoulder or inside his pocket just watching curiously as everything passed by. Everyone at the vet thought she was the cutest kitten. (--While I'm typing this she is making it known that she needs serious cuddles but meowing at my nose and nuzzling my eyebrow--). When we told them we didn't know her gender, everyone tried to figure it out. The nurse was all up in her junk and rubbing it with her finger and still couldn't tell. When the vet walked in, she took on quick look and dubbed Dexter a female. Dexter was also found to have no earmites and to be 5-6 weeks old. She was dewormed and we got pills for her fleas because she was too young to get a standard flea treatment. They told us to make her a soft food meatball and stick the pill in it. The little Englishman did this when I dropped him off at home and I guess she ate it right up. Dexter may be pretty fearless but while at the vet we encountered a large yellow lab mix of a dog and Dexter immediately started growling. The dog seemed really curious about her and had an expression that read "Hello little fuzzy thing, I am dog. I want friend. Be my friend? I like little fuzzy thing. Please be friend." Dexter was having none of that.

 Dexter is strange for a female cat. All the female cats I've had before ranged from cautiously apathetic to downright unfriendly. They would only allow you to pet them on their terms which were usually them being in an awkward positing behind some barrier so they could get loving but you couldn't get them. Dexter, however, is as playful as a kitten should be but whenever she's a bit tired or hasn't seen you for a while, she will come and lay either next to you or on your shoulder. Today is the most loving she's been since her first night. Rather than purely cuddling up to me for warmth, she got right in my face and started meowing at me and licking my nose and would only stop when I pet her. She wouldn't let me type for more than a minute but now she's asleep with her head on my shoulder and her body inside the collar of my sweater. She sounds like she's snoring and she sleeps like she's flying like Superman.

 

Dexter after her baths

Adventures in Driving

I'm sitting in the computer lab at my school, waiting for the little Englishman to get done at work and researching what we need to bring to his adjustment of status interview. Whenever I research this sort of thing I get really anxious especially since it's on Monday and I just found out we have to bring some additional documentation that might be difficult to get. Therefore, I'm going to take a blog break.

I always think of blog ideas when I'm driving but they usually go out of my head before I have the chance to actually write about them. Today, however, I figured I'd write about my driving experience. It sounds really boring, I realize, but just hang in there.

Unlike most people, I got my license at 17. I missed the day where everyone signed up for driving lessons I guess so I had to take them well after I was eligible to get my license. The day I took my driving test, we decided to go to a little town called Chadwick because they were easier there. Supposedly. I guess I wasn't the only one with this idea and they'd started to crack down. The tester said I drove well but there were enough minor mistakes that made me fail. He said if I practiced I could even take it the same day in my hometown. Well, my mom and I went and practiced 3-point turns and coming to a complete halt at stop-signs (I guess I was rolling a bit before) and then we went back and I took the test again and passed with the tester that everyone claims is the hardest bitch they have.

Now, I've only been driving for three years. During those years I've had four cars. It's not that my parents like giving expensive gifts to me every birthday. No, it's because I have somehow manage to wreck all three previous vehicles.

My first car was a navy 2000-something Volkswagon Bug. I got that as a present for graduation and a little bribery for me to continue playing golf when I got to college. My parents had even christened it with the license plate "DABUG10," because that's their nickname for me. In hindsight, I really like the car, but at the time it was terrible. There was always something going wrong with it. It had left me stranded in Iowa after a successful job interview and meant I had to go work at the golf course. I could take too many people in it because the backseat was so small. The undercarriage was so low that I got stuck every time it snowed and it was a massive ordeal to get out. I think I liked it more for the cuteness than the practicality. At that time, I lived about two hours from home and I liked to shave that time down to about an hour and a half. Combine that with the fact that my i-pod had died and I'd been taking my laptop in the car and hooking it up to the stereo, you have a recipe for disaster. The road going home was really curvy and at one point has a curve you have to take at 20mph over some train-tracks. While changing a song on my laptop and bombing it about 70mph, I noticed the curve coming up and smashed down the brake pedal. There was some loose gravel on the road and that doesn't usually mix well with emergency braking. I swerved out of control, into a ditch where I narrowly missed a control box, and then bounced up onto the tracks. Some nice people stopped and let me sit in there car while some country boys acted manly and pulled my car off the tracks (in the process triggering some bloodcurdling bells to chime that indicated a train was coming). It was the day before Thanksgiving and my dad usually gets very very upset when he has to come pick one of us because of car trouble.  However, he was happy I was okay (though slightly seething in his mind, you could tell) and took me home. Sidenote: the sheriff that came to the scene had a two-toned mustache. One half of it was white and the other half was light brown.

(Intermission: Some guy in the lab is watching videos and commenting on them, even though the rest of us can't hear them, while snorting snot loudly every five minutes. I gag every time)

The car that I got to take home after that crash had been my grandmother's but since she couldn't drive any longer, it was mine. This car was pretty fantastic. It was a 1996 Chrysler Cirrus. It had amazing acceleration and was in great condition. I could drive it through thick drifting snow at 50mph and wouldn't even falter off course. Snow that my old car got stuck in, this new one blasted through. It even got pretty good gas mileage. I adored that car. After I dropped out of Platteville and went to live with my sister, I would occasionally meet my mom at the halfway point between Sterling and Freeport to pick up things I needed. For some reason, on Memorial Day (less than a year after my previous crash) I had to get something from Freeport and rather than my mom meeting me halfway, she talked me into driving all the way up. This was a trip I was long familiar with and could make it in about 30 minutes if I sped. I got into Freeport and turned onto this road we took every single time we came back from Sterling since I was born. I reached the first intersection and I swear on my life I looked both ways before advancing. WHAM! Escalade to the driver side, just in front of my window. I remember saying "Oh fuck no!" before it hit and raising my arms to block my face before it hit. I blacked out briefly before paramedics helped me out of the car. Someone shouted "Did someone lose some glasses," and I feebly responded "Here." Those things are durable: completely fine after being flung from a car and I still have them today. I was taken by ambulance to a hospital. When we came in, there were a few people in the lobby getting treated for minor cuts that yelled "Hi!" sarcastically as I passed in the gurney. They must have been the Escalade's owners and I want to know where they get off saying that when they hit me. When my mom came into the emergency room it must have looked terrible: her youngest daughter laying in a bed with a neck brace and blood from my arm and oil from my car splattered on my shirt. I told her I was fine and asked for my purse because I'd been getting a slew of text messages from a boy I dubbed "Wizardboy." Unfortunately for me, I had gotten one seconds after the crash and when the cop came in and asked to look at my phone, the previously read message from that time implied my guilt in it all. Also, unfortunately, my dad has a dispatcher friend, more on that in a bit. I was gushing blood from a few severe cuts on my arm but had not concussion and the neck brace was soon deemed unnecessary. I was hoping to have some wicked scars from stitches for all my trouble but sadly they used medical glue to seal me back up. I have scars still but they don't look badass, they just look like I tried to commit suicide improperly. When my parents took me home and my sister arrived to take me home, my parents and I had a "chat," by the creek in my backyard. I thought, from previous experience, that this was going to end with my dad yelling and me in fits of sobs and snot. Strangely though, it was stern but calm and my dad said he loved me and didn't want me to die and it felt like he actually meant it since he rarely tells me. He also said that I wouldn't be getting another car for a while.

He was true to his word and for the next several months I'd been riding the Senior bus to and from school with some backwards rednecks. There was a woman who sounded like the female equivalent of Bobcat Goldthwait (look it up if you don't get the reference) and had eyes facing the opposite direction of where they should, one faced completely to the right while the other faced slight to the left. She was a major bullshitter. Every day she had some crackpot story like how her parents owned a ski resort and she could have been a professional snowboarder. She claimed she had a twin sister who lived in the Sears Tower in Chicago at $200 rent a month ("That's really expensive," she said after this stinkbomb) and that her twin was really smart and was studying Marine Biology ("That's super hard, that shit is,") but Bobcat lady said she was better at math than this genius twin. She also aparently had a baby boy who died shortly after childbirth who she named Angel. I have a feeling that children services took him away though because we passed the DCFS (Dept. of Children and Family Services) building one day and she said "I call them the "babysnatchers," cuz they're always taking kids away from their moms," to which I replied, "They only take them away if the parents are awful." She fell silent after that. Yeah, I have a sister and a mom who work for DCFS, I wasn't about to let her pull a comment like that because she's a shit mom and has shit mom friends.

Anyway, after I met the little Englishman and he decided to visit, I used that as my bid to get the car. My mom didn't want to tell my dad that a man from a foreign country I'd met on the internet was going to visit so it ended up being a no go but my sister reluctantly let me borrow her car so I could go to his hotel for hours and hours on end. After I got my grades for that semester, however, my dad eased up and I got my mom's old car. It was a 2004 Hyundai Sonata. She'd gotten the newer version of it because she liked it so much. It was my favorite car so far. Sure it smelled like my mom's trigeminal noralgia breath, had a bajillion miles on it and the acceleration on it was horrible and jerky because my mom is really hard on cars but dammit that car looked like a luxury car. They'd made  it a beacon for cops though by putting the license plate "TOTALD get when your parents own your car and all the ones beforehand. I had some early run ins with this car. I'd scraped the dumpster twice, the second one resulting in the loss of a sideview mirror (passenger side, which I think is worthless anyway). However, this car took me places. It took me to Rockford to pick up the little Englishman on his second trip to the states. It took us all around Sterling. It took us most of the way through the blizzard for which we hadn't seen forecast because the trip was on such a whim. It then took us into a ditch but thanks to it we got  to stay in a hotel for less than we would've normally been charged. The next day, it took us home. Because of the blizzard and my shitty landlord, I couldn't park in my parking lot and had to park on the street. At this point I'd become such a safe and timid driver that some outside influence would have to take the life of my Sonata. It came in the form of a  drunk 18-year-old behind the wheel of a massive ford  GM seems to have it out for my cars or something. Anyway, the little Englishman and I were just about to go to bed at 2 A.M when a knock came on our door. We didn't answer at first because we had drug dealer, thievish, possibly gang banger neighbors. They kept knocking and I made sure he was unarmed from the peephole. He informed me that my car had just been crashed into. I made him repeat this a couple of times because I was subconsciously keeping myself from hearing those words. It was so surreal. The little Englishman and I went outside and my car had been moved from its parking spot about 25 yards forward and up  onto a snow bank about five feet high. This truck must have been going ridiculously fast for it to push my car that far and also completely destroy the tail end of my car (as pictured at intermission because my computer sucks and won't let me move it down here). The cops were really nice and caught the truck driver who was apparently unharmed by the accident he'd just caused. The most damning piece of evidence against him was the headband I am currently wearing, which flew out of my back seat and into the bed of his truck. Luckily they returned it to me after his trial.

This has all resulted in my Saturn. It's the ugliest gold with tan interior but it's got a V-6 engine which my dad said "should get me out of bad situations in the future."

Night at the Yellow Dog

As I mentioned in my last post, not only does the little Englishman need his regular intake of rum or something with a proof, he can also scrounge up money in our worst financial times to accomplish this. About a week ago, he put on a fabulous show of this and we ended up with a thoroughly memorable night at a local bar called the Yellow Dog.

I'd just finished work and was walking home when my specially attuned senses alerted me that the little Englishman might want to drink. I knew we had enough rum to get a bit of a buzz going and there was a special event taking place at the bar. How special was shortly to be revealed. Sure enough, when I walked in the door, the first question out of his mouth was "Fancy a drink?" Now when he says "a drink," it means a night long boozy session of multiple drinks. We made a plan to drink really quickly while playing Tiger Woods golf where you had to take a drink every time you didn't make it in the fairway or on the green and it was double drinks for any hazard and down your drink if you get anything over par. It took probably about an hour or two to finish off the rum and make our way to the ATM. We were planning to limit ourselves to only $10 at the bar but when he told me to take out a 20, I knew we weren't coming home with any of that left.

The first thirty minutes or so were uneventful. We just sat around on the patio and people-watched while racking up the mosquito bites. I have a cluster of them on my leg that were so close together, they swole into one monster bite. When everyone decided to go inside is when the crazy train dumped off its passengers. I'd noted outside how many 40-year-old women were there dressed in hooker clothes and looking like Barbie's more plasticy mom. One in particular was Crystal and I found out her name in a lovely, not at all slutty way.

Crystal was clearly trolling for male companions that night. The little Englishman and I had been sitting quietly while music boomed through the tiny shack of a bar. A particular song seemed to have gotten Crystal's attention because she chose that moment to start booty dancing with the lesbian owner of the establishment. Crystal's white dress went up and everyone saw her matching lace thong and ass tattoo. I asked her after the little show who's name that was on her ass and she replied with "Mine. I'm Crystal. I love me," in the most valley girl-esque tones imaginable for someone with mature vocal chords. Crystal was tattooed so large on her ass and surrounded with so many cheesy roses and swirls that I somehow doubted she loved herself and more likely had daddy issues.

From this point on, an audience of middle-aged men were staring at her carefully, hoping for more shows, which they got...on top of a table. More ass was shown and the lesbian owner decided this was the cue to show her own ass.

After all this, a woman introduced herself as Barb and started rubbing my shoulders before pointing to a younger woman and whispering in my ear "That's my daughter. She hates my guts."

We saw two pairs of tits before the evening was through and when those left the bar, so did most of the men. The little Englishman and I spent a few hours talking to a rather fascinating couple named Dave and Krista (I think). I saw Dave a couple days later and had no clue who he was until he mentioned that night.

Anyway, we're probably going back to the free strip club tomorrow so there may be more stories later.

New Place, Same Ignorance

I haven't posted in a while but I only have four followers so I don't think it really warrants an apology. An explanation, however, shall commence:

During my last little blogging stint, I'd applied for Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. My friend Kim had gone there and rather than researching colleges too in depth, I decided to check this one out. Luckily it had the major I was interested in (advertising) and I kept it in mind. I looked at a couple of other colleges, including U of I and University of Illinois in Chicago, but they either didn't have an Advertising major or the major was so competitive that with my previous college follies I wouldn't even be considered. Besides, they were massively expensive and I'll already be paying off loans for the rest of my life so no thank you. Seriously, how does anyone come out of college with a good credit score? Anyway, to my subtle surprise, I was accepted. This meant two things: copious amounts of work and serious drinking in preparation for leaving the shithole I'd lived in for the last two years of my life.
Now blogging takes a backseat when the aforementioned conditions start applying. I had a little Englishman to look after and he dries and shrivels if not supplied with fermented and distilled sugar cane every two days. I also had to begin working 30+ hours a week as to pay for the rent on our apartment there, the bills we still had, and for trips to Edwardsville in order to find both an apartment and a new job. The little Englishman also began visiting my tiny southern grandma daily at the behest of and income supplied by my mother. He ended up making more money in three days than I made in a week and provided the capital we used to pay the first month's rent and bills as well as buy some lovely food and drink.
 This capital, however, dried up fairly quickly. For the last couple of weeks we've been scrounging for gas money and eating the cheapest food we could get. We bought two weeks of groceries for $40, which is rather impressive. Despite our economic situation, the little Englishman still managed to budget enough to get his rum on.

The place we are living now is about twelve miles from Edwardsville. On paper this seemed fine, I'd be able to get to school in a reasonable amount of time and get to whatever job I got from campus afterward. This location turned out to not be so prime. My mother had been paying for my gas weekly while up north and so it never entered my mind that going 24 miles or more daily would eat up gas so quickly. A half a tank is about $20 and I have to put that much in every two days, so there's that money gone from our allotted $100 a week. Nevermind the fact that all the grocery stores around us price gauge. Also, I found a job in our 950 population town so I can't really stay on campus as long as I might like and my Spanish teacher has mandated that we spend 10 hours a week in the language lab. It's better now because the little Englishman has finally gotten his work authorization and is working as a cleaning lady so we can afford all the gas, but he can't drive which means I have to drop him off in Edwardsville by 7:30 every morning, this one included, and then find something to do until I have to start class at 10 am or 12 pm depending on the day.

I work at the only grocery store in Worden (pronounce War-den but I didn't know that so I'd been pronouncing it Whir-den to everyone). It's also a deer and game processing plant so about the meat section there are several mounted deer, moose and, I believe to be, antelope heads. I guess once deer season starts I'll get to shove a hook in the deer's necks and then hoist them so the blood drains out. I also get to cut off their hooves. I am really looking forward to this. Feel the sarcasm.
This gives you an idea of what the townspeople are like. They might describe themselves as a countryfolk but I'd say ignorant is probably a more accurate description. Not all, but some. Twice while in there, I've had the n-word uttered in my presence to describe the only black teacher at the local school, once by a guy that I'd mentally described as deep-seeded intolerance man just by the way he looked and then had my description confirmed. What I don't understand is how some white, redneck who relies on foodstamps to feed his family and has never stepped foot in a college let alone earned the qualifications it takes to be a teacher can possibly think he's better than this black teacher. Somehow because his skin has less melatonin in it, that secures his status as superior Aryan despite having the vocabulary of a four year old. One of Intolerance Man's buddies, who'd been laughing along when the n-word was uttered, made the comment when his total came to 17.76 "That's George Washington's birthday." When his friends laughed, he came back with "No wait, that's when he was elected president. That's right." His friends laughed again but I don't think any of them actually knew the significance of 1776 until I said "No, that's the year of Independence." They are so patriotic with their Ford trucks and Confederate flags yet they don't even know the year their country was essentially born . Hell, they are so into the Confederacy but I doubt any of them could actually name the first stated that seceded.

Anyway, I have a bit more free time now that I'm not supporting an invalid Englishman so I will possibly be updating this blog more often. The little Englishman and I have also been toying with the idea of starting up a foodblog based on the restaurants in the St. Louis and Metro East area so I'll put up a link to that when it starts.

Twilight "Saga": Eclipse Movie

My feelings on the Twiight "Saga" are thus: It's the terrible self-indulging musings of a middle-aged Mormon who cannot write better than a high school fanfiction centered around a mary-sue.

The little Englishman and I have spent every other day drinking this week. Tonight is one of those nights so I apologize for any typos and the like. Our drinking has been Twilight "Saga" centric. We've watched both New Moon and Eclipse under the pretenses of a drinking game. The one for New Moon was tailored to fit the "plot," of the movie. Let me tell you, those rules and the general shittiness of the "story," got us drunk within the hour and had me feeling pukey within two. However, the drinking game tonight was far less tailored because I'd only read up until New Moon (several weeks of my life wasted in the pursuit of anger over poor written drivel).

Clearly the millions spent on Eclipse were focused on writing alterations. Though the cheesiness of the original "plot" was a hard thing to avoid, I actually found myself genuinely laughing at the parts that were intended to be funny. The story seemed to focus on Edward being a creep at the beginning and Bella doubting her relationship with him, which is valid and should be explored because Edward is a psycho stalker and, though Robert Pattinson is pretty attractive, pale skinny men are creepy.

Eventually Eclipse fell into the trappings of the Twilight "Saga": Bella continues being willfully naive: Edward's stalking and controlling nature ignored: Bella contuining to be a Mary-Sue, and Jacob continuing to lose his personality despite being the only round character in the novel.

It was unfortunate which is the best adjective you'll hear me use in describing a Twilight related novel or movie.

I'm actually hoping someone will pay for me to get into Breaking Dawn because I really want to see the vampire c-section and werewolf pedophilia

My Experience With Internet Dating Sites

I've always been pretty against online dating. I'd had an "internet boyfriend," when I was thirteen but I found out he'd been lying to me about his name and age. He was also soliciting my other underage friend and implying to both of us that he wanted to have anal sex with us. My friend and I are still hoping to see him on To Catch A Predator and have Chris Hansen read off the chat transcripts: "I want to blank you in the blank until my blank erupts with blank."

However, when I moved to smalltown, IL, my views were changed due to lack of close friends and crushing loneliness. My sister suggested I check out okcupid.com to try and find some friends, mostly because she didn't want to deal with me being in the house all the time. So, I filled out the profile and answered hundreds upon hundreds of questions to try and get my possible match score up.

The first guy I started talking to was named Tim. Tim seemed rather simple but nice. He had a kid but I was trying to keep an open mind since everyone in smalltown has a baby. We arranged to meet up. My sister made sure she got all of his information and that he picked me up far enough away from our house so he didn't know where we lived. I was standing in a parking lot near a billboard, surely looking like a hooker because I'd decided to dress up for this meeting. A rusty old SUV with a plastic wrap window pulled up and Tim asked if I was Caitlin and I said yeah. I got in the backseat and noticed that there was a different guy driving. I was a little more scared because there was more of a possibility of being overpowered and raped with two of them about. They took me to Tim's grandma's house and that's when I noticed Tim's front teeth. All of his front teeth were either rotted or missing. He said it was because his baby's mother hit him with a toolbox. Things weren't looking up for Tim from then on. We talked about video games a little and he said that he liked Vampire Hunter D but then the conversation turned entirely uncomfortable. He started talking about how he had been chatting with this stripper from another dating site. But not a dumb stripper! Oh no, a very intelligent stripper who know the meaning of antidisestablishmentarianism, because no nine year old with a dictionary knows that word. Then his buddy and he started telling me how they had both banged Tim's baby's mother at the same time the night she got pregnant and they didn't know which one was the father because of this. Needless to say, I made up some lame excuse to go home after they told me that. Every now and then Tim comes in to County Market with his baby's mother and purchases items on WIC. He doesn't recognize me and last time he argued with me when his items went over the dollar amount on the WIC slip because he'd "bought the same stuff last time on it." Obviously, prices never change and things never go on sale.

The second guy I met was Jacob and I'd met him before when I was seventeen. Neither of us really remembered each other but we had the same friends. I found out that he was into LARPing. He said it wasn't LARPing, it was special exorcise. I actually became very close with Jacob because he was the least weird guy I'd met in a while. We had similar politics and liked similar things. As things wore on though, I found him to be very very boring and was just using him to have some semblance of company. I knew it was time to lose Jacob when he told me how hairy my arms were and that I should shave them. I'm fairly confident that I broke his heart but come on, my arms are nowhere near hairy.

The third okcupid.com was named Seth similarly had chauffeurs but one of them was a girl so I felt a little more comfortable. I found out he had lost his license because of some DUIs. I wasn't fond of this part of him but he shared his weed and we watched some It's Always Sunny before going to see The Lovely Bones, which was amazing when high. I liked Seth because he never tried anything with me and was nearly always high and therefore nice when we hung out. He didn't seem like the kind of guy that I'd date though so I kept him in the friend zone. He went to jail a couple of weeks after we last hung out so I haven't really seen him since last summer.

This is Andrew Paxton. Note his creepy thinness

After Seth came Andrew Paxton. That's right, I'm giving you his full name. And here, here's a picture. He lives in Prophetstown, IL. This boy took the cake for creepiness. We had been talking on the phone for weeks and we finally decided to hang out by going to my sister's boyfriend's show in a nearby town. He was very, very small. I had probably about 50 pounds on him and a few inches. My sister deemed it all right for me to go to a party with him alone because I could probably take him if he tried anything. We got drunk with all of his friends and it was a lot of fun. I started dancing with this girl at the end of the night and was quickly led away from the party by Paxton. We got in the car and he yelled at me for dancing with her because she was "the slut of the town," and probably had herpes. I explained that I was just having fun and meant nothing by it but he continued to argue with me. I just let it go. I thought he was driving me home at that point but we went to his house which was in the middle of nowhere. He made me pizza but in my incredibly drunk state, I dropped it on myself and he had to get me a wet rag. It was then that I realized I should probably make it clear that he wasn't getting any which in drunk speak translates to "I didn't shave today because I didn't think I was going to do anything." The details get hazy after this but unfortunately I remember kissing him.


The next day, Paxton continued his argument with me about the slut girl. I kept defending myself that I didn't know anything about her and was just having fun. He yelled at me for getting so drunk with all of his "friends," who he then told me all did crack. At that point I was angry at him for taking me to a crack den in Prophetstown, IL. I told him never to contact me again at which point he got really sad and told me he'd "developed deep feelings for me," which I rebutted "You've only known me for a week!"

We stopped talking for a while but at some point he'd enrolled at Sauk. I decided it would be find to talk to him while there since he was a funny guy and liked a lot of the same things as me. It was fairly soon after that he'd been stalking me secretly online under the alias "MikeF83." Even the year in that name is wrong. He'd secretly been reading all of the tweets between me and the little Englishman for months. I blocked him on every internet site I knew he watched me on and avoided him at school. He soon dropped out, proving he'd only been going so he could see me.


I recently found out that Paxton dated one of my friends after stalking me. He'd told her that I puked pizza all over myself that night after they'd seen me at County Market (yay, he knows where I work!). I guess he's not a virgin anymore but he still did the pathetic thing of telling my friend he had "deep feelings for her," after only a month. I also found out that he apparently had pulled a gun on his mom when he was in high school. I now lock all my windows and doors at night

Celebration

I'd like to celebrate my first follower(s). It seems like it is a group of blogs that are very much into food. This post is dedicated to you and the pursuit of happiness through following one's stomach.

This is a fairly recent event in the little Englishman's and my history. We both love food. Love love. Most of our budget is spent on good food and not the other trappings of a materialistic society. Clothes? Please, give us a good ham and our heart is content.

One of my favorite foods is of course pizza. It's amazing how even the cheapest, poorest made frozen pizza appeals to me. I've had everywhere from Gino's East to two dollar County Market pizza and I've only ever turned my nose up at one: the doughy undercooked mess that was the UW- Platteville's student center pizza which I even had to "cook" at one point in my life. You need to understand this to know the deep impact the story I'm about to tell had on my psyche.

The little Englishman and I are not the most well-off people. We live from my paycheck to paycheck with additional money from his "America Savings," and the money my mom has decided to pay him to visit my "mahmaw,": my surly, dementia riddled old Southern grandma.  We try and eat out sometimes but lately we've had to save it for special occasions. Recently, we decided my survival of an eight hour shift at County Market was a celebratory occasion. We got the cheapest yet nice take-out pizza smalltown, IL has to offer. We scrounged up the $7.47 required to buy it and took it home. When we got home and started to ingest the spoils, little Englishman decided that the pizza required more cheese. Luckily, we had some shredded cheese available to add to our ill-fated pizza.

It was at this point that little Englishman ruined our night. I did not witness the exact events but he's described it enough times for me to share with you the details. According to him, he coated the edges of the pizza with shredded cheese and then turned the pizza on. After finding it suitably hot for melting cheese but not scorching enough to melt his hand, he "turned it off" and put the pizza in, box and all. About five or ten minutes later, the little Englishman smelled something burning. He went over to the oven and found the pizza box on fire. Instead of forgetting the pizza and saving the apartment, he decided to try and put it out with a kitchen towel to spare the pizza. However, upon being supplied with more oxygen, the fire quickly grew. The little Englishman called me over for help. Upon seeing my oven on fire and thinking about our own safety and our apartment building, I literally ripped the fire extinguisher off the wall, pulled out the pin, and sprayed the oven thoroughly until no flame remained.

At this point our apartment was filled with thick smoke. I quickly moved to the car but the little Englishman stayed behind. After about 20 minutes, he came out with what he'd been saving: the remainder of the pizza on his plate and a drink. I was livid to say the least. I'd spent hard earned money on a pizza I'd only got two slices of and he was about to stuff his face with four more than I'd had. I watched him eat it in pissed off silence before make him buy me a BK DoubleStacker and some fries, which pale in comparison to the amazingness of that pizza.

What had happened was the little Englishman forgot he'd come to America and the broil didn't mean off and pizza boxes can catch flame when introduced to enough heat.

"Cunt Market"

That is what the little Englishman calls my place of work "County Market." The name came about when we noticed lots of stores in the place I live had letters burnt out in their signs. For example: Carpetland was "Car--- Land", Beefaroo was "-----roo" and Blockbuster was "--ockbuster." We started playing this game where we'd remove letters from stores in order to make the funniest name. Most of mine were lame and not worth mentioning but he came up with the little gem that is now the title of this post.

This is me in full work attire. Notice my awkwardness.

I started working at County Market after being here for a year and applying every where, literally.  It's such a small town that after putting in applications for a week, I ran out of places and briefly worked from home as an "independent contractor," answering calls for various infomercials and trying my hardest (tricking) to get the people on the other end of the line to buy all the extras. I earned so little at this job that I didn't even have to document it in my taxes for this year.

County Market is a chain grocery store in Illinois owned by a company that has numerous other chain grocery stores and even a pet store. I knew on my initial training day that it was going to be an interesting experience when they showed a video about why they remained "union-free." It was basically one long right-wing anti-union ad about how unions are bad and why we should get wrapped up in their bureaucratic mess. I'd driven to training that day in a car with a "Union Yes" bumper sticker and another bumper sticker that had the name of my mom's union on it.

My first day actually working was a nightmare. I was scheduled for seven and a half hours which means I got two breaks, one fifteen minutes long and one thirty minutes long. I took my fifteen break about an hour and a half into my shift thinking I'd get my lunch later on. This never happened. I watched as hours went by, my feet and ankles feeling like they were going to explode. Anyone who works in retail knows that feeling even though it seems like just standing around wouldn't cause so much agony. I realized how inadequate my training had been when people started coming through with alternative forms of payment to the normal credit/debit cards, cash and checks. I'd been so confident going into that shift that I'd remembered everything I'd been taught that it became mentally anguishing whenever I had to call one of the Customer Service Managers (CSM) over to help me or override something stupid I'd done with their keys. I also had never been taught that when people come through with their foodstamps cards, sometimes you have to type in the numbers on their cards because most of them have been unable to keep their cards in good repair. I also did not know that when people with these cards used vendor coupons, they'd still have to pay the sales tax on the items. This is something that most people with foodstamps cards also do not know so after being yelled at for hours about having to pay a few pennies of their own money and still not having my second break, I was close to a mental break down.

The last couple of hours went by in a similarly horrible fashion, however there was only one CSM still there and one other cashier. It was at 9PM that I finally broke. This family decided that it would be a great idea to come out at this time with about ten WIC slips. The father seemed rather scary and was in a foul mood because they'd brought all four of their children to come shopping. The mother was passive and seemed rather apologetic about the whole situation, but it didn't really help. Anyone who has been on WIC or has had to ring up WIC knows that it is terribly complicated especially if you have no idea what you are doing. Most of the stuff this family picked up was either not WIC approved or not the right item listed on the slip. I had to keep having someone to go get the right item or just take it off altogether, which meant more overrides for the one CSM still there. Also, if you don't designate the transaction as WIC before starting it, the register won't let you go back and change it so the entire thing needs to be canceled by means of supervisor keys. It doesn't matter if all you've done is scanned the "Max Card" (County Markets Big Brother card), the register doesn't care. The father of the family kept getting more and more impatient with my foibles and the CSM was on a register at that point to handle the long lines of people created by my inability to complete one transaction without trouble and couldn't come over every time I had an issue. I felt all the pressure from these customers and started tearing up a little from my own unabated anxiety due to my ADD. I finally finished with the WIC slips and started helping the people next in line but my register took issue with that. After inputting so many WIC transactions into it, it was stuck in WIC mode so when I scanned the next customer's bread, their only item, it kept telling me it wasn't a WIC allowed item. The CSM couldn't help me because she was helping someone else and no matter how many times I trying scanning this loaf of bread, the register kept spitting at me that it was not WIC approved.

I broke into sobs over my inability to simply ring up one item correctly and the long line that had formed from it. I kept apologizing repeatedly to the customer and letting them know it was my first day, which was probably incoherent to him though he said it was all right. I felt like an idiot because I was crying unabashedly in front of dozens of strangers. The CSM was finally able to help me and when I told her that I hadn't gotten my second break, she let me go home. I fully planned to quit and never go back to face the embarrassing environment my scene had created. But my sister made me go because she wanted money for all the bills I hadn't been paying for the year I lived there. No one mentioned it the next day but anytime two fellow employees were chatting quietly to one another, I was convinced they were talking about me. It took me a month to get over the episode and my shyness towards my coworkers. Strangely, after all that, I'm now a CSM and a bookkeeper and get to hold the keys.

In related news, the customer whose bread made me cry found me on both facebook and the myspace I hadn't used since I was 15. He added me as a friend and after a bit of back and forth asked me if I worked at county market. I was alarmed by this stranger having found me on the internet, months after our one and only encounter and tried to pump him for information so I could avoid him at the store. I asked what he looked like because he didn't have a profile picture. He said he'd show me but asked if my boyfriend would be okay with it. Recognizing his intentions immediately, I responded that he'd be fine as long as it was a picture of this guy's face. He responded with what must be his best pick up line ever "I could show you much more if you didn't have a boyfriend." I instantly blocked him. It wasn't until recently that I found that he sent me a message on myspace as well and it was there that I found a description of him. I was a bit saddened to find that it was the guy that I'd been having rather pleasant conversations with whenever he came in with his grandma to by bread. That's all they ever buy, no joke. My coworkers and I have deemed him Bread Guy.

Again, I'll probably post more soon in a similar strain as this.

I'm Terrible At Introductions

Today I left work early because I can't take Pamprin like a normal lady without my entire body feeling numb and an overwhelming nausea replacing any cramps I may have been taking the pills for. I'm currently buzzing on Adderall, prescribed because I'm ADD, not recreational like hundreds of other college students. Anyway, Adderall makes me feel like I need to do something with my hands at all times and be productive. This usually manifests itself in my smoking an entire box of cigarettes every time I take it, but right now it's caused me to start a blog instead of napping to get over my Pamprin sickness/crampiness.

Let's get this show on the road shall we? I don't normally like introductory posts for anything be it blog, vlog, resume etc. They are never particularly interesting to the reader or the person that feels they need to write it. Alas, how else I'm I meant to start off a blog besides to give you a bit of background information on myself?

My name is Caitlin. Not Katelyn. Not Caitlyn. Not Katlynne. All the other spellings are wrong but have been proliferated within society by people who think they are being creative by changing a few letters in a traditional name. I'm kind of a student. I mean kind of because right now I am only enrolled in one class and that's Fiction at a rinky dink little community college. I was a full time student last semester but one of the teachers had a bit of a god complex and anger issues causing her to keep changing due dates of major projects based on how much this one kid pissed her off in class. I dropped that which means I have to make up the credit, or so I thought but I got accepted to the real college I'm planning to transfer to despite the glaring "W" on my transcript. In fact, I got accepted to my next college despite having dropped out of the other real college I went to before my current situation.


As I mentioned before I'm ADD and on medication for it. It's not so serious that I will get too distracted to function normally but serious enough that it comes along with crazy anxiety and horrible memory. While at the previous college I attended (University of Wisconsin in Platteville), I decided (and by decided I mean forgot) to only take my Adderall every once in a while and party every other day. My first semester wasn't so bad. I managed to get a 2.5 with one failed class (Music Appreciation). I failed that only because it was at 8 AM every morning after my usual drinking days and I figured I could blow it off. Unfortunately I blew off the class when he told us that we were going to take our final a week before we were supposed to so when I showed up on the day it should have been, the secretary told me my teacher was in Mexico. The next semester, I drank less and was determined to not fail anymore classes. That started a long string of missing both my English and Math classes which resulted in me failing those classes for the next three semesters I attended. By the last semester at UW-Platteville, I was on two or three different antidepressants and another ADD medication that caused me to be on the antidepressants and was only attending one class which was basically the school newspaper. But I made sure that one counted by doing articles for and editing the opinions section as well as doing two weekly cartoons for it. During that time I managed to also get caught drinking in the dorms twice and forgot to attend the class about drinking that allowed me to continue living in the dorms which meant I got kicked out. The final straw that caused me to leave Platteville altogether was when my boyfriend dumped me after finding out that I was cheating on him with his best friend. If this last sentence makes you dislike me, believe me, he precipitated the situation (I'll probably post more on this later).

My mom, my therapist, and I decided that it was time to move on. My mom came up with the idea that I should move in with my sister about 45 minutes from my hometown in Illinois and enroll at my current rinky dink community college. I'd rather devote an entire post to my time with my sister than explain it right here but the basics of it were that I went off the antidepressants and began regularly taking my Adderall and attending classes and achieved a better than average GPA. My sister is a very very secretive person and massively OCD. She's also a bit of a hoarder which meant I had to clean every time the house was unlivable because I had no qualms about throwing away receipts and junkmail from the last two years. She and I had epic fights over absolutely nothing (mostly the dishes) and this eventually resulted in her punching me in the head before kicking me out. Luckily, I'd already been looking for apartments and very quickly found a new place to live after staying with my grandma with dementia for a couple of days.

During my stay with my sister, I met the tiny little Englishman who now lives with me. He and I started talking on an internet dating site. I know, I know, only sad people go on those but we were both sad and lonely. After several months talking to each other for an average of four hours a night, he worked up the money to come visit me. We'd both made a bet that the first person to say "I love you" to the other would owe them a dollar. I took this bet even though I knew I felt that way already but didn't want to be in a relationship with someone who lived 4,000 miles away. Go figure on the second night of his visit we got drunk and I spilled the beans. I still owe him a dollar. He recently came back for another visit and is now working on changing his status.

Well, I didn't expect to cover the last four of years of my life in my "introduction" post. I'm going to end it here so I don't get too many "TL;DR" comments but I'll probably post again in the next five minutes since I'm bored and the tiny Englishman is playing FIFA with little boys