Having a Real Bad Day

I'm not having a good day. Don't feel good, am tired out, like always, too much work to do, but not getting a thing done, and I'm just blurred, might be the word. Bllllurrreddd.

Part of it's getting Hope back. Part of it is all the deaths lately of cats. Part of it is being confused about my brother's role as landlord of this house. Part of it is frustration over some woman who adopted Ozzie two days ago, then wanted me to take two tame cats she had for some reason, and when I wouldn't, brought Ozzie back. Part of it is an inability to adopt out Snowman. Part of it getting 8 or more calls just this morning from people wanting me to take their pets. I'm worn out, all the time, and I still dream of leaving Albany for some Paradise somewhere.

I had asked my brother long ago, to sell this house, that I didn't want to live here and he had said he would. Now, when I asked him again, over this last weekend, after discussing it with my older brother, he said he hadn't given it any thought and besides it was my house. I have no idea what that meant. It's not my house in any sense of the word.

It is unfortunate that I was evicted in Corvallis and that when I requested help from my brother, facing homelessness, that there was less than a month to find a solution. I wanted to hold out, to live homeless awhile, if need be, until a house came up for sale in an area where I would like to live. He was all gung ho to get one quick, the problem solver, the hero, using my share of my fathers estate to buy it, he said, although I still rent it from him. And now I feel stuck here. This was the only house on the market in the mid valley, in my brother's price range, still for sale, and vacant. The only one. There was only one for sale in his price range in Corvallis, and that turned out to be a rotting falling apart trailer.

There is a problem with water under the house and the plumbing, which backs up water in the dishwasher, and unless I run it empty twice a week, the water overflows onto the kitchen floor. These are minor things, compared to what I've faced in housing before.

I never got the cat yard built. They wouldn't be safe, necessarily, out in it here anyhow. So in some ways, my housing situation is worse, for the cats at least. It's worse here for me in the sense I'm isolated away from any green escapes like I am dependent upon. I've always escaped into a forest or park, when stressed. I don't have a way anymore to escape "home". I grew up escaping into a forest for comfort, starting when I was four years old and trying to escape my father's judgemental ways. In some ways, I could say I was raised by the forest and wild animals. I know these things sound petty. To me, they're not petty.

I haven't been able to even recover yet from that horrific move, emotionally or physically. I don't know why. Maybe it just pushed me over the top on stress and physical exhaustion.

So when my brother told me "it's my house" when I asked again about trying to sell it, I didn't know what to think. I can't sell a house that's not mine. I can't look for another one either. I don't have that kind of money. I just really don't know what to do anymore.

I'd love to get out of here, back to the fringes of Corvallis, some tree lined quirky neighborhood in south town or somewhere, and once again enjoy all those parks. I don't know how I could ever make this happen. I wish I could figure it out.

I've had a bad week. All the animal abuse and neglect over here, it gets to me, constantly, day in and day out. It's just the norm here, for some reason. I've had about 8 phone calls this morning. Most were people wanting or demanding I take their cats.

I want out of this area, before it's too late for me to make any changes, before I'm too old to even be able to live in my car if I have to for awhile, to find a better life some place greener and quirkier and with a lot less concrete and a lot more living things.

I try to keep up a brave face, but it isn't easy for me to live in a town where nobody seems to care anything about animals. It's damn hard. I could explain it this way:

It'd be like if you didn't like to live in piles of stinking trash, and moved to a place where people think it's normal to live in big huge piles of rotting garbage. You'd try and try to haul off all the garbage everyone was living in, and some would thank you, but there's just not enough time in every day of every exhausting year to haul off all that garbage or to pay all the fees to take it to the dump.

You'd be an unhappy person living somewhere piled high in stinky garbage if you didn't like living in garbage.

Same thing with me and the unfixed and neglected animals here. The people here seem to think it's normal, or, at the least, do nothing to change things or help out. I could kill myself trying to get all the animals fixed and cared for here, but the mentality wouldn't change and all I would do would be bang my head against a wall until I die.

A woman who does trap sometimes in Albany also, told me this tonight, which made me feel better. She said "We won't solve this. We're only a step in solving things here. It might take 30 years for things to get better here. You're doing a lot." After that, I felt like some weight lifted off my shoulders.