My Biffle fo' shizzle

Awww can you feel the love? "Um, no, that's Clarence's tongue." Pheonix does not exactly reciprocate Clarence's affection, but he puts up with it. Clarence would love Lilly too, if she would just let him. Okay now before you start thinkin this blog is going to be blah blah my my cats blah blah blah cute... well that is only going to be PART of the goings on! I could tell you all about the cuuute dog I met today, but I won't. See, the title today is FRIENDS. Biffle is my enunciation of the acronym (is that the right word?) for BFFL, best friends for life.
I watched the new King Kong movie today after work (only 8 hours today woot!) and it was really good, and really sad, and I totally cried. Actually, what I did was suffer severe throat cramping while 3 tears squeezed past my attempted barrier. Maybe 5 tears, while luckily CommonLaw (my soulmate BFFL)'s head was in my lap so I could hide my crying. And here's what I started thinking: If I can fart, not that I do such things as fart, in front of CommonLaw, how come crying from a movie is too embarrassing to stand? When I was a kid and I read Where The Red Fern Grows, I bawled for at least an hour. Without any embarrassment at all! So then I started thinking about another BFFL of mine who also loves that book AND cries every time he reads it. And he doesn't mind admitting it, come to think of it, I dont mind the admitting either. Just don't let any one SEE me cry.
Anyway, so I got to thinking about this BFFL and how he's my hermit BFFL, the one who TOTALLY understands that if you're not at work, you're at home, or maybe grabbing food on the way there. If only Safeway delivery was free. And even though we havent hung out in over a year, or even talked much for that matter, we will still always be biffles. That's what the word means after all. Yes, that's what happens when 2 hermits are friends... We used to live a block apart, and that was awesome, cuz for some reason leaving my shell was fine when it was only 60 seconds away, and not only that, I was entering ANOTHER hermit shell. And we always had a blast. Sometimes we'd just sit and read the paper together, not even talking, just enjoying each other's company. More often though, we'd crack a couple beers, play some double solitaire ( he almost always won), or just talk for hours and hours, about music, politics, life.. Sadly, he moved, and so did I, and while we live in the same county, maybe 9 miles and 20/25 minutes appart, and hell, have the same JOB (different offices though), we just don't get out to each other's places. But I know we'll hang out again someday. When I finally get my own land, he is soooooo welcome to come put up a cabin, pull up a rocker, and have a home brewed beer with me. Even if just for a visit. A tear may sneak outta me then, or 3, but it'll be okay. I'll probably be all mature like him by then. :P

Wheeeee

Here Clarence expresses my feelings aout my 11 hour day.. cockeyed and maybe a little deranged. Well, yesterday i made mysef get up early, after 6 hours of sleep, to make really good and sure that I would be able to hit the hay early and get enough sleep for today.. it didn't work. I have learned this before and yet I keep trying -why? I am so not a morning person, AND while I have learned to function on 7 hours o f sleep 10 is really ideal. Sooo last night I go to bed at 10:20, it's the best I can do, and my alarm is set for 5am. AND of course, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, thoughts whirring right along... until just after 1am. And this was not the type of insomnia where you may actually doze off for 5 minutes here and there only to wake up and check the clock's progression, no I was wide spankin awake. I got about three and a half hours but at least I got some rem in therre. There's something so wrong about working longer than you sleep in any given 24 hour period, even wronger (I don't care if that's a word... is it? Really spaced out zombified here) when you work twice as long as you slept, but man, I'm pushing work hours 3 times what I slept. Insomnia!
It's always worst the night that transitions my weekend to work week... In absolute dire emergencies I search the medicine cabinet for any leftover painkillers from various medical traumas (Remember that time I had jaw surgery? That was fun! Please tell me I didn't finish off the Percocet). Ok but before you go thinking I'm getting all Rush Limbaugh here, let me say that I probably get THAT bad of insomnia once every 6 weeks or so.. I mean insomnia I get probably once or twice a week but the pill seeking desperation kind maybe 8 or 9 times a year. So Mom (what a hero) sent me some of her valium a few months ago, and I think I had used 2 out of 10, and last night by 12:30 I was thinking it was getting to be emergency status so I went to look for that envelope she sent me and O M G. OMG, I threw it away in some mad cleaning frenzy!! /Cry...
But you know what? I was just 1 day, and here I am, see, I made it. My job is so fricken monotonous, which usually sucks boredom factor wise, today however, it was to my advantage, I just stuck the cruise control on and spaced out. Hooray for auto pilot. Luckily (or tiringly) about 70% of my work day I'm on my feet- if i had a desk job it would have been much harder to stay awake. Oh, and one of my co-workers, what a hero, brewed the blackest pot of coffee, hallelujah.
Sadly, I left about 3 hours of work behind, so tomorrow is round two (sob). This is why I'd rather not have the "holiday"... I just work 46 hours give or, well, doubt take, the week after. Still, I'm incredibly thankful that I get to come home to yummy food, and cozy shelter and I am now going to zone out on a movie and revel in the luxury of falling asleep on the couch. Ah, life's little pleasures.

Ok so I am a noob and I am expirimenting so bear with me... Now attempting to share some photos with you. Whenever I tell people that my cats go hiking with me they seem rather surprised, but what surprises me is that their cats don't! So here is (hopefully, if I can figure this out ) some photographic evidence. Lilly, my fluffly gray and white beauty, is the least amused by hiking.. CommonLaw ( fiancee ) says it's cuz she's floofy she's an indoor cat but that seems kinda discriminatory to me, like, just cuz I have big feet i'm clumsy (so not clumsy). Okay so really I just wanted an excuse to display my cats.. I must have over a thousand pictures of them but I made myself start throwing away at least the blurry ones! That's Clarence, our redheaded woodpile orphan, Lilly, and Pheonix ( yes I spell it that way cuz "phoenix" looks like you would pronounce it "foh een ix"). Anyway, they are great and funny hikng companions. One time I was just standing still, taking in the forest, when a crashing to my left announced a deer that didn't see me- the dang thang almost slammed right into me but stopped at the last second literally 4 feet from me. We eyed each other for a minute and then it bounded away, Pheonix intently tracking it. Certain he could take it down himself, I'm sure, but alas it got away.
Tomorrow I have to work 10, maybe 11 hours for 8 hours pay... that's the price of a 3 day weekend and honestly, I'd rather just not have the holiday. I have promised to scream the next time someone tells me what a good job I have. Seriously, it's like food service- every one should have to work it for a couple months in their lifetime just so they can see what it's really like. Make that, how awful it really is. But I did enjoy 3 days away from there, though the longer I'm gone the harder it is to go back. Especially days like tomorrow when I have to get up at 4am... I'm toying with the idea of working 6-5 instead of 5-4. Oh well, when I think about it as just one day that will definitly come to an end no matter how hard it is, I can do it. Just one day. And as my coworker said once, "we all have our crosses to bear". LOL I know it's really not that bad, it's just work, but still, misery loves company so while I'm at work tomorrow I can know I'm not alone, others are bearing their crosses too!
Like Pheonix, laying on the porch in a puddle of sun.. his life is hard! He has to eat food and chase bugs! It's rough! :)

Hermit... yay

I was watching some old Northern Exposure episode, more because it's nice to watch a sitcom with lush forests and expansive mountain ranges in the background instead of dingy city concrete than because it's a good show (ok well the first season was pretty good) and anyway an old man dies and leaves his acreage to the town doctor and this other lady. Some how it comes up that the old hermit man lived ever so happily, a hundred miles from people... it just made me laugh so hard, in delight, that someone ( a fictitous someone but oh well ) shared my thoughts so perfectly and matter of factly. Unfortunatly I don't live miles from people but that would be the ultimate... Luckily I can still be a hermit with what I have to work with. I have my one room cabin in the woods, a couple acres as my backyard ( rented at an exhorbitant price but average with the exhorbitant going rate in these parts ) and I manage to only fill up my gas tank once a month even though I drive to work 5 days a week. Now I'm sure there must be plenty of other hermits ou there, but due to our very nature we're not exactly running into each other! Haha kinda funny... but the people I do interact with always want to go out and do stuff, cuz they're not hermits, see it's like this vicious cycle. Ok not really but I swear sometimes I think it would be easier to come out as gay (I'm not but no problem with anyone who is) than as a hermit, I mean, I don't think people would try to set me up on dates with men if I came out as a lesbian but as a hermit everyone wants me to get out more. I'm not afraid of going out or anything, I just prefer a hike in the backyard to strolling the public concrete. Plus, my cats follow me all through the forest. It's hilarious, I'm like a sheppard or something. Plus the forest smells a lot better than downtown. Anyway...