Saturday, July 18, 2009

Crumbled Like an Old Old Cookie

Today I fell apart. I am exhausted beyond exhausted. My left knee gave out and became terribly painful. I injured it initially May 6 at Pet Day, chasing canopies being hurled and twisted by a windstorm. It has never really healed since then. For a week maybe, it won't hurt as badly. Then it will flare up again and give me intense pain.

My back is a different injury. Soft tissue. Incurred in the first round at the homeless camps, when carrying in or out traps with cats in them. It's a long walk over a rough narrow trail, if you're carrying a trap in each hand, with a cat moving around inside it. So that first night I couldn't bend over without at some point some juncture of nerve endings and muscles involved in particular movements would collide. I thought I could overcome it. My usual method is just to keep going. I hope the movement and blood flow will help it heal.

But this morning, I returned cats again. My back was not in great shape. I still had planned to try to make the vendor table duty out in Sweet Home, at a belly dance event. I was trying to make cat toys yesterday like crazy to sell, and greeting cards and frig magnets. My printer broke again however. I spent most of yesterday again trying to fix it.

My efforts to get a vendor table going for today might have resembled a one person beehive. I was tired already from an outstanding week of cat catches and fixing. I mean, I got 20 out of that homeless camp this week alone to be fixed. Pretty good for an old lady.

My back was "soft" this morning. That's how I describe my back when certain movements generate a lot of pain and I know my back on the brink of a major episode. I tried to take it easy. The homeless advocate woman, whose car I use to transport the cats back over to the camps, with her driving, took the heavy traps from me, to carry herself. She knew I was in pain.

But I was completely out of cat litter and wet cat food. I went up to Winco before coming home this morning, to get both. Winco had coupons stuck on the wet cat food cans. They used to be cheap there, on cat food. But in the last year, they have become more expensive than most places. I was only buying cat food there this time because I was out completely. And completely out of litter.

The coupons, however, were not redeemable there. They were stuck on Friskies cat food cans and stated if you bought 8 cans of this type, you got one can free of another type. But Winco doesn't carry that other type. The last time I bought cat food, at Winco in Salem, the clerk honored the coupons anyhow, with regular Friskies cans. Not at the Corvallis Winco. The clerk called a manager, who was rude and said they won't honor those coupons. The checkout clerk was polite to my face, but then went a few feet away and began making fun of me with a vendor. Wasn't my day I guess.

I'd gotten six bags of wood pellet fuel, to use for cat litter. Those are heavy and awkward. Trying to hoist them out of the deep shopping cart into my car, still crammed with now empty traps from returning homeless camp cats was not a kind thing to do to my back. I felt the pain almost immediately. I limped home. I felt dirty and hopeless and alone and broke and like such a loser. I fell asleep on my couch.

I'd wake up for awhile, and try to clean litterboxes here, or unload my car, but the pain and the exhaustion were too much for me. I'm broken down. Broke, too! I don't know what to do with the kittens in the bathroom. If I take them back to the camp, it is giving them a death sentence. But, I can't keep them. I haven't yet received one call from the ad I have in the paper either. It's very scary.

I had already notified my brother that I am looking for another place to live. I didn't know how he would react. But today, he replied that in about a month, he might be able to come up and help look for another place.

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