April 30, 1997
Fufi got returned due to allergies. He won't be there long though. Charlie II got adopted.
We've only got one cat in the sick room. Yay! Jack's not even all that sick, so he'll be out soon.
I almost quit today. I felt like I could never get all the work done and I was moving too slowly. A friend of one of the board members brought a 3 year old boy and a 4 year old boy into the shelter while waiting for the board meeting to be over. They were constantly in the way. Every time I moved to get something there was a kid in my way. Every cage I turned to to clean had a kid poking his fingers into it. They poked Zeus one too many times and put him in a very bad mood. Then when Jackie came out of the board meeting she wanted to know why Zeus was in a bad mood. I told her it was because her friends were poking him. I immediately felt bad for complaining.
Later I asked Dawna if there was another shift with less pressure. She said all the shifts have too much work to do. That didn't really answer my question. I don't mind having too much work if I can take my time and do it right and not have Roberta hounding me about getting it done. I was late this morning because there was a huge traffic jam on Rt. 110. Traffic was backed up from Bridge Road all the way to Amesbury. Salisbury center has been all dug up for weeks now and whatever they were doing to it today required traffic to be stopped completely in all directions for 20 minutes. It was after 9:00 when I got there and I left my house at 8:20! Grrrr.... And then to have Roberta all worked up into a workaholic frenzy didn't help.Amy was late too. Same reason. Stuck in the darn traffic.
I left about 12:10 after cleaning 16 cages and sweeping the floor. I left Roberta doing the dishes. I felt guilty but I'd promised to go for a walk with Rita and have lunch with her.
I took the back roads through Georgetown to get to Haverhill from Salisbury without going through the center again so I could avoid the traffic. Great idea except that the speed limit on Rt. 97 is 25 mph in a lot of places and I think cars were going slower than that most of the way. I was late and hungry.
We had lunch first: grilled cheese with vidalia onions, dill, and cayenne pepper , and of course espresso. Then we walked the entire condo loop for the first time since the mysterious knee thing appeared. I'm still standing.
Rita thinks I'm a walking encyclopedia on the subject of depression. She kept asking me questions she should ask her doctor, who she's going to see this afternoon. I think I said things I shouldn't have: like that I've been in therapy for 17 years and on Zoloft for 4 years. She asked how long I thought I'd have to be on medication and I said "probably forever". I should not have said that. She doesn't need to be discouraged so early on. I'm sure her case is different. I told her no two people are the same. She asked me why I became depressed. I said: "I was born that way" Also a stupid thing to say. The real answer is I don't know. I can't point to any one thing.
I'm hugely frustrated right now by my failure to improve what I consider to be inappropriate displays of emotion - even getting testy and wanting to quit the cat shelter because I felt pressured and the little boys were in my way all the time seems phenomenally inappropriate to me. I think I should be able to sustain a mellow even mood at all times and I've never been able to. My therapist keeps telling me it's ok, I'm ok, etc. but I know in my heart of hearts that until I become mellow and even keeled at all times I can never go back to the real world.
I thought getting a grip on my addiction to work would cure the overly heavy emotional involvement in work and if I didn't have the inappropriate level of emotional involvement I wouldn't get irritable. Wrong. As soon as somebody puts pressure on me my defenses go up. I've got to work harder to show them. Show them what? Who knows?
I must be premenstrual today.
I got interrupted by a phone call when I was writing yesterday's entry and then didn't realize I hadn't finished it when I got off the phone. So I just uploaded it, figuring I was all done. I read it this afternoon and realized what had happened, so I've finished it off. Unfortunately, I was in today's mood when I wrote the rest of it, so it's sort of PMSish. Snappish. Whatever. I've gotta get this under control.
It's like way cool, wicked cool as we say in New England, that Ellen is finally coming out, but give me a break! Why is this a news story? Why are representatives of Christian and gay organizations debating each other on NPR? Why is Ellen DeGeneres appearing on Primetime Live with her parents? Why is this all everybody is talking about?
Nancy is going to an Ellen party at Annette's tonight. I have oceanography class tonight and it's the last class before the final so I kind of hafta go. I don't mind missing the party. I don't mind missing the episode. I just feel kind of left out of the general hysteria. That's me, left out again. Why am I always feeling so left out?
As I told some people at the seder on Saturday night: if all lesbians vanished from the world overnight the libraries and social service agencies would close down and the world would be overrun with feral cats. Not a pleasant prospect.
Yep, I'm gay! - Ellen DeGeneres
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