Rosie’s cat, Tippy Two (aka TeeTee, Tippy, Teepee) died on Thursday. We’re not sure what happened to him, but he was found by our neighbours lying on the pavers around their pool. At first they just thought he was enjoying the sun, because he was stretched out and looked like he was asleep. However, when they returned later in the afternoon and he was still laying there, in the same position, they decided to check it out and found that he was dead.

Mum and Helen collected his body, and he was taken down to the vets last night because the ground near our house was too hard to dig the hole to bury him. That made me sad, because if he wasn’t going to be buried here, he should have at least been buried near DeeDee out at Lauren & Nathan’s place. I would have been so distraught had DeeDee not been able to be buried, not to actually have someplace that I knew I could go and visit him, and somewhere to put the little stone that Lauren painted for him. Rosie should paint a stone and put it by DeeDee’s at Lauren & Nathan’s house.

Rosie and TeeTee suited each other well. TeeTee, being black and white, was the ideal emo/scene cat. He was aloof and effortlessly cool. Rosie is aloof and makes an effort to be cool. She learned all her best tricks from him, such as curling up into a circle to sleep in the sun, walking around like you own the place and everyone else is just hanging around while you tolerate them. He was a beautiful cat, the prettiest out of all our cats, and he had the sleekest black fur you can imagine.

Rest In Peace TeeTee, I hope that you didn’t suffer, and that somewhere in the afterlife you’re hanging out with DeeDee and keeping each other company.

Today is Tuesday, but my first day of work for the week, so it’s really my Monday. Monday’s are never usually a good day for me, but when I’m tired they’re noticeably worse. Also when I’m worried about things, work things for example, that can make for a long, unproductive day. But having a decision made to set things in motion to change my current situation makes me feel a little better.

Napoleon kitten is in love with my computer. He’s in love with the cursor, he’s in love with the text running across the screen as I type, and he’s in love with the menus that magically appear when I click on things. Also I think he just wants to be a part of whatever anyone is doing at that point in time that appears mildly interesting. He’s grown a lot since I first got him, but I thought he’d appear heaps bigger when we got back from the weekend away. He’s so soft and purry and beautiful.

Today I feel like staying home, sleeping, and reading. I’m reading Catch 22 at the moment, by Joseph Heller. Noelle is reading it as well, which is what inspired me to go buy it. She got her copy from the shelf at her work, because she was bored and had nothing to read on the train. When she was over at my place, she started telling me about it, and it sounded so weird that I had to get it. It’s so funny! And weird. Here is the Book-a-minute version of it (not that I agree with their summarisation of the entire thing, because I’m not even thinking about the anti-war aspect of the book, I’m just enjoying the odd conversations and ridiculous things everyone does and says.)

We’ve been at Yamba all weekend, and it rained for two & a half out of the four days we were there (Saturday, Sunday, and half of Monday). Still, on Monday Christian managed to get some nice shots of main beach, while the sun was shining for at little while. Also we drove to Grafton, and had a look at the Jacarandas in full bloom. We went to See Park. I haven’t been there in ages, and was trying to remember where it was. I didn’t remember it being right next to the Waterslide, but there were lots of things that surprised me about Grafton. The huge new Bunnings, for example, and the new Catherine McAuley College… I guess the kids won’t be able to sneak out to KFC anymore, or wag off and go to Shoppingworld!

This was a bulletin post… but I don’t want to force people to re-post if they don’t like filling out stupid surveys.

1. How tall are you barefoot?
5′9… or 5′8… I can’t remember. Maybe I’ve shrunk.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No…

3. Do you own a gun?
No. I own a pirate sword though

4. Who’s your true friend?
Noelle

5. Do you get nervous before “meeting the parents”?
Hmmm… it depends on the situation and the relationship.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
They used to be awesome from Wendy’s at Grafton Shopping World when I was in school.

7. What’s your favorite Christmas song?
The First Noel.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Chai or juice

9. Can you do push ups?
Yes, but not too many because my broken/healed arm isn’t very stable.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
Clean enough, I would like to wipe down the sink though.

11. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?
My green cameo necklace. I hardly ever wear it though, as atm I don’t have that many green clothings to go with it.

12. Do you like painkillers?
I like the effect they have on pain. I don’t take them that often.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I’ve said this before I think… why must you term it as “weapon”? Can’t we all just be friends? This isn’t a war you know!

14. Do you own a knife?
a PIRATE SWORD. GOSH.

15. Do you have A.D.D.?
No. I have a problem with not being able to stop paying attention to something. I have too much attention sometimes. Like now, for instance, when I should be getting ready to go to work. I’m going to be late!

16. Middle Name?
Marie

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
- what time will i have to finish work today
- i wonder if the traffic is going to be bad from that road thingy
- ouch napoleon!

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:
- milk
- honeydew melon milk tea
- sandwich (yesterday at lunch)

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:
- chai
- pineapple juice + water
- coke zero

20. What time did you wake up today?
5:05AM

22. Current worry?
work

23. Current hate?
see above

24. Favorite place to be?
that’s a secret

25. Least favorite place to be?
um… in the city at the bus stop when i’ve just missed the bus and I have to wait for the next one.

26. Where would you like to go?
Vietnam, Hungary, Russia, Korea, Thailand… Yamba! Well, at least I get to go there this weekend

27. Do you own slippers?
No I wore socks all through winter time. I kept meaning to get slippers, but never got around to it.

28. What shirt are you wearing?
Red polka-dots with a black singlet over the top.

29. Do you burn or tan?
Burn. I used to tan easily, but now I’m too pale.

30. Favorite color(s)?
Deep, verdant green.

31. Would you be a pirate?
O’ course ye scupperin’ scoundrel!

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Friday night

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
Whatever is on my mind at that moment

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
I wasn’t really afraid of the dark. I preferred a dark room to one with a night light. A year ago I was afraid of zombies.

35. What’s in your pockets right now?
I don’t have pockets

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
Christian’s drawing of Link puppy

37. Best bed sheets you had as a child?
The hot-air balloon ones

38. Worst injury you’ve ever had?
my broken arm. Or back. But I think arm was worse because i had to have surgery for that.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
4

41. Who is your loudest friend?
I’d probably be loudest amongst my friends.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
No one’s really silent… maybe Frank?

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Like anyone can even know that Napoleon!

44. Do you wish on shooting stars?
If I see one, and if I remember that you can wish on them. Most of the time I just say “oooh! cool!” and i’m not thinking about wishing for anything. Seeing a shooting star is pretty special in itself.

45. What is your favorite book?
ummmm Harry Potters are good, but also I like Year of Wonders, Doomsday Book…

46. What is your favorite candy?
turkish delight

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
’sif I’ve planned a wedding song!

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
No idea…

49. What were you doing at 12 AM last night?
sleeping, perchance to dream!

50. What was the First thing you thought of when you woke up this morning??
what time is it? Can i go back to sleep…?

Yes, that is probably true, but happy is SHE who consolidates her debts. I’m not saying any more about it until tomorrow (I don’t want to tempt fate. Maybe I already have? Eep! Fate is pretty easily tempted. No self-control whatsoever. I bet it was actually fate in the Garden of Eden that day, and not Eve, who ate the fruit. That bitch.)

Napoleon and I just got back this morning from Christian’s place. Napoleon met Christian’s cat, Neo, and they had a grand old time. Well, not really. That’s a lie. Neo didn’t like Napoleon at all, and hissed and sulked the whole time. Napoleon got a bit scared and then just acted like nothing happened. I hate when people do that! But it’s okay when Napoleon does because he’s so cute and probably he didn’t think that anything was wrong, even though Neo hated him. Really, all Neo needed was time. Cats usually get used to cute baby kittens invading their territory with time, when they see that everything is still as good as ever: the sun still comes up in the morning and shines on your favourite spot in the garden, you still get to laze about all day and do nothing… Teetee is getting used to Napoleon. Now, instead of getting angry at Napoleon and acting all offended that he even exists, Teetee just tolerates him. If Napoleon comes too close or bothers Teetee when he is eating (which he always does), Teetee will swat him away, but that’s it. And Teetee doesn’t get angry and spiky and growly when Napoleon is around now – he’s just normal and you can pick him up and hug him as well.

I’m tired. Night!

I’ve nearly finished making everything nice and spic and span for tomorrow night. I feel like scrubbing down the entire bathroom, because of the dubious clean it got on Saturday (despite my eventual assistance), but I don’t have the time or the energy. Already I’m feeling drained, because I had such a stressful day. I think that tomorrow will be extremely stressful. Hopefully all goes as planned. But there is that saying, “How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” And God could be in the mood for laughing. Typical of all men! I’m going to say a million Hail Mary’s tomorrow, and pray to Pa a million times over. It felt like that’s all that was going through my head today… hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswithyou blessedartthouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywomb Jesus

holymarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeaths AMEN.

Calum and I went for a walk after work today. He bought us both a hot chocolate from coffee club and we went and sat at the edge of the watersense garden in king George square. Some guy came up to Calum just as he lit up a cigarette and said, “can I have one of your cigarettes?” Calum said “no.” and the guy just went all weird and immediately said, “no? I don’t need any of yours anyway; I got some of me own! What would I need yours for? You can shove ‘em up your ass, you’d probably like that ya poofta!” He was such a derro. Calum did his usual “go back to Burpengary” and then later thought of awesome comebacks.

Apparently Calum has previously had a run-in with this guy in king George square, over cigarettes, of all things! He thought he might be in for a fight this afternoon, but luckily it didn’t escalate to that level.

Some photos, just because I haven’t done this in a while:

Baby Napoleon on the couch, on his first day at our house. Look how little he is!

A card that I found at the cheapo shop in the valley, just down from Brunswick St train station. I don’t get it.

I found this coaster somewhere, from when Kirra, Charmaine, Chris & I went to Noosa for a weekend. We went to some RSL or something for lunch, and there was a family of mullets. Chris wrote this on the coaster and threatened to give it to the teenage boy of the family.

Update! I just burnt my hand by pouring boiling hot water straight from the pot all over it. It kills.

I just found out that thing I was trying to remember! It’s “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Yessssssssssssssssss

Today was a fairly decent day of work as far as productivity goes, but a pretty bad day as far as morale of most people goes. Brooke announced she is leaving because Leigh was successful in obtaining a position at a Hotel down the Coast (New South Wales) about an hour out of Sydney. So that means Brooke will be here for another week and a half and then she’s gone. And Kirra is going in another two weeks as well. So next week will be the last week of two pretty senior members of the team, as far as length of service/time within the team/role go. I’m predicting that this is going to have a profound impact on the remaining team members. Chrissie is already looking at alternative employment, and I’m not sure how long Benyamin will stick it out.

Anyway, enough of that. Cocktails & BBQ at my place this Friday night from about 7pm to celebrate Napoleon kitten’s existence! If you haven’t met Napoleon kitten yet, this would be the ideal forum for such an endeavour. I guarantee you’ll like him. There’s just no way possible that anyone could not. It’s impossible.

Payday tomorrow. I’ll be putting aside some money for the Yamba weekend, and also paying off a crapload of crap. Crap such as the rest of the vet bill, and some money on my credit card. I’m thinking I’ll also need to get some credit for my phone, which is something that I haven’t had to think about until recently when I cancelled my post-paid account with Optus and switched to Vodafone. This is, incidentally, one of the best suggestions ever made to anyone in the history of the world. I recommend it to everyone.

Also I want to buy a new dress. Scaasi is just teasing me every time I walk past there and they have the most beautiful dresses and I just look and sigh and my eyes are glued to the window until about Sunglasses Hut when I am unceremoniously dragged from my reverie by the stupid guy with the portable microphone. BLEUGH!

I have work to do but I would prefer to be on the Internet. I just changed the setup of my googlepages account to be advanced and to support experimental and developmental (hehe mental) content, so now I can actually edit the html and not use the gross and boring layout that they have at the moment that makes me look like a n00b. I don’t have any other layout though, so maybe I really am a n00b. And I don’t think that any layout that I make would be any better than the n00bified one that I have at the moment, so I’m pretty much stuffed. Stuffed like a stuffed vine leaf (aka DOLMADE! why are they so cold-hearted?).

We had morning tea at Lauren’s place today. We were originally supposed to all go out to Yum Cha, but then because Lauren overbooked and doubled up with guests and commitments, we ended up just going to her place and having foods cooked at home. It wasn’t entirely bad; there was some pretty funny conversation.

Hmph. I brb after I finish fixing my net connection. Now that Rosie is home, I am no longer allowed to use the Ethernet cord, so I’ll have to figure out wtf is wrong with my usb thingy.GOSH.

Last night Lauren, Nathan, Christian, & I went to see the Grates at the Tivoli. John arranged for us to be guests and for Christian to have a media pass, so he could be up the front for the first three songs and take photos. The Grates show was really good. There were lots of drunken people everywhere and some angry people had an argument. Then some girl climbed up over the speakers like Gollum to get to John on stage. When Lauren and I were in the bathroom, someone body-slammed the cubicle across the corridor from us, and apparently completely stuffed it, which I found out later. It felt like an earthquake when they did it, and then they were like ‘oh shit!” and just stood around staring at the broken door & wall while the line to the girls toilets got longer and longer.

I was underwhelmed by Violent Soho & Faker. I hadn’t had anything to drink and I’m not used to being stone cold sober when I’m out at a concert. It felt awkward to be dancing in the side part, where all the lights were on and there weren’t many people. But then, when we had been in the throng, it was boiling hot and there were some overzealous people who didn’t realise that it wouldn’t be a good idea to go all out headbanging when there’s so little room for each person as it is. I preferred being out of that, and it was a fun night.

We spoke to John afterwards, but Patience was nowhere to be seen. I’m not sure where she was. I think John might have said but I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention to remember. My memory is so bad. At the moment I’m kind of just going along on my merry way, oblivious to everything until I get a phone call saying “you had an appointment today” or, “are you planning on paying this bill any time soon?” And then I get stressed because I haven’t been thinking about these things at all. At least if you think about them and mull over them for a bit they’re not such a rude shock.

Anyway. I just realised that I’m tired. I got to bed at about… 1:20am this morning, and then woke up again at 7:55am. Mum came into my room when I had woken up and was asking where the kitten was, and then said “What are you doing up?”. I don’t know how you’re supposed to answer that question, so it irritated me for some reason. What am I doing up? Hmmm. I have no idea what someone is actually asking when they say that. “Why are you awake?” could be another way of terming it. I just said, “I woke up. I’m awake.” Because that’s kind of what the answer is always going to be.

This is a story that I submitted for a creative writing task at school, I think in Yr 11. I think it also counted towards our final assessment. This was only part of the submission, and I can’t remember what the guidelines were. If you’re interested in the outcome, read until the end and I’ll tell you what grade I got.

One day, a man came out of his house and found that it was raining plastic bags. As this had never happened before, he called all his neighbours out to see. One of them was an old Chinese man. He said that the same thing had happened to the Communists in China in the early 1900s, but everyone doubted his story. He was like all old men, and just kept on talking, until a cat told him to go home.

By now, the plastic bags were steadily rising, so everyone decided to call on Super Ted to help. Super Ted came and said his magic word. Of course it was ‘Franks and Beans’ because Super Ted is a Pommy teddy bear. Someone overheard and soon the whole neighbourhood was zooming around in the sky, which was lucky because the plastic bags were not well over the roofs of the houses. It was raining plastic bags everywhere in Australia and Super Ted had to tell everyone his magic word so that they didn’t disappear under the plastic bags.

So now the whole population was in the air and out of harm, they all sold the plastic bags to other countries, and organised to make a bridge to the moon out of compounded plastic bags. All Australians were by now very rich from selling their plastic bags, and could afford to live in other countries, because no one could live in plastic bags. This is why Australia was called, “The Wacky Wonderworld of the South.”

So, if you were wondering, the entire assignment was graded A+. It’s such a load of crap.

I feel like crap. Today was a very flat day. A grey day. A horrible, stupid day.

It’s dumb, because I’ve felt really sick these past two days, and so I haven’t been able to eat anything, but then when I don’t eat, my physical reaction to the drop in sugar levels in my blood is to cry. For no reason. Well, maybe I had reason to this time, but most of the time I have no reason, and it’s just a coincidence that this time there was a reason.

I remember when we were in Berlin, and we had just gotten to the hostel. That morning, when we had left, everything was great. When we arrived in Berlin, at the airport, when we got outside there was SNOW everywhere, and it was SNOWING! And I made footprints in the snow on the side of the covered path from the airport to the subway. My boots, due to the fact that they were so awesome, left imprints of “GET LOST!” and a picture of a kitten in the snow. So it was always a novelty to make a perfect boot print. Anyway, there was an actual reason for me telling this story of Berlin. That being that the day started off so good, and due to the expenditure of energy required to carry bags from the airport to the subway, and then catch the subway and find the stop we needed to get off at, then transport our luggage from the subway stop to our hostel, all of this along with trying to keep warm was VERY exhausting. So I used a lot of energy, and, consequently, started crying and couldn’t stop until I’d had something to eat.

So, therefore, me being sick and upset is a really bad combination. And most of the time, if I’m sick, I’ll also be depressed for the very reason that I don’t/can’t eat.

Whew. Good story is a short story Cass! Thanks Calum. It’s not that I’m not aware of that; it’s just that I’m such a stickler for details.

Anyway, NCIS is on. Ima go watch.