#they’re euthanizing me this tuesday | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

suntrastar · 4 years ago

Text

abstract: chapter 3

chapter 2!! you can also read it on ao3 :)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Artist!Reader

Summary: Wait- Bucky Barnes attends your art class? And you didn’t even recognize him?

Word Count: 9520. i am deranged. someone euthanize me i beg you.

Author’s note: jesus fucking christ. this is so long for no reason. probably kind of poorly written. that is okay though. i really really appreciate the support you guys have given me for the last 2 chapters!! i was a bit iffy about joining tumblr but i’m glad to be here now :) please comment and reblog!! i appreciate it so much!!! ily all ok now enjoy this mess!!!

“You want to paint me?”

Rina looks at you, shocked, mouth agape, lone cherry tomato speared on her fork.

“Yeah,” you say, and smile with your straw still in between your teeth. “You in a field of flowers.”

“You want to paint me in a field of flowers?”

“Yes- that’s literally what I just said.”

The bustle of the restaurant is loud enough to drown out the rising volume of her voice. Thankfully. She’s being excessive, again- as if this is the first time she’s ever been the center of attention- but you’re fine with it today. You almost like it.

Today, her enthusiasm is almost contagious.

“I know,” Rina says “Duh. But, like, it’s just so crazy to me that you want to put me in your second solo show ever- I mean, why me?”

“Because,” you say, and almost leave it at that, just to mess with her. “Because you’re my best friend, and the whole thing is focused on people I know. And your hair would look so good with poppies, and-”

“I’m your best friend?”

“Obviously,” you say, even though to her, it might not be that obvious. “Who else?”

“That is so sweet,” she says, and leans back in her seat, dramatically clutching her hands over her heart. Rings sit on each of her fingers, gold and heavy stone. “You are too nice to me.”

She’s really milking it. But you’ll let it slide.

Rina gives you a self-satisfied smile, which you return without too much trouble. She’s so overwrought and showy with how she sits, limbs sprawled all over, like they’ve been blown into disarray by the wind. Her hair, still glossy red, is parted down the middle and made up in two French braids, tips just barely brushing her shoulders. The hair ties don’t match.

She has no best friend. She probably has, like, five other people just like you, who she calls on when she feels like it, whenever she wants company, when she feels like humoring someone. Or when she wants someone to listen to her talk.

It comes as part of the lifestyle- can you really blame her?

“I know,” you say, veering back on topic. “Bucky gave me the idea.”

You do it on purpose.

Her eyes go wide.

“Bucky?” She says, incredulously. Like she doesn’t believe you.

The feeling of being incompetent comes quick in a flash, and it takes too much to put it away.

You’re not incompetent- his number is in your phone, after all, isn’t it?

“The Winter Soldier, I mean,” you say, and the words feel all wrong in your mouth.

“No . Shut up. You are not on first-name basis with the fucking Winter Soldier.”

“Oops,” you say.

Her jaw drops.

You’re grinning too hard. She didn’t expect this from you- you didn’t expect this from you! You take a bite of your food, some garlicky chicken thing you can’t pronounce the name of, to delay your response. It gives you time to think of what to say next.

Rina waits, stunned into silence.

“We’re… talking, I think,” you say. “I asked him for his number.”

“And he gave it to you?”

“Yep.”

There’s a story there, that you won’t tell her.

You texted him a day after class, on Tuesday. Was that too soon? You didn’t care, your mind was too muddled with so many other things- icy blue eyes and different techniques for drawing wrinkles and this week’s shopping list and the best color that went with orange-red, and the laundry that you still hadn’t done.

You were too giddy to get smart with it- all you sent was a simple Hey.

All he sent back was a simple Hi.

Then, once you had read over his message too many times, you turned your phone off and pretended it never happened.

It’s too nerve-wracking. And pointless. You’re going to see him on Monday again, anyway! There’s plenty of time to text him- everything doesn’t have to be so immediate- you’ll get around to it before then, for sure.

You just have to stop thinking so much.

“I cannot believe you,” Rina gushes, and from her expression, you believe her. “You’re all grown up! I am so proud of you. That man is delicious, I cannot-”

“Do not describe him as delicious, oh my god.”

You burst out laughing as Rina raises one eyebrow, filled in dark. Her eye makeup always kills. “Am I wrong?”

“Well… no, but…”

***

Steve leaves, but Bucky stays back at the end of class to help you clean up. Acrylics again, and it’s the second-to-last class, so you had finally brought out the canvas.

Canvas means more fun, but more mess. More paint splatters on the tables, more brushes with clogged-up bristles.

Bucky doesn’t smile as he says bye to Steve, and it makes you feel a certain type of way , but you stick to business. Cleaning supplies are pulled out, paper towels are ripped from the dispenser. Bucky starts on the tables while you roll up your sleeves and start the sink, preparing to start on the brushes.

God- these brushes.

If these brushes were washed incorrectly, you would cry. They’re new, and high-quality, and the bristles are still soft and not yet frayed or discolored, and the handles are made of thick, clear plastic, and they come in different sizes and styles, and you can barely believe it, but they all even have rubber grips.

They’re really nice brushes.

“You didn’t text me back,” Bucky says.

You wish the sink was loud enough to swallow all sound, swallow you up within it.

Still, you look over your shoulder, giving him a pained smile while he scrubs at a spot of dried paint. He looks back at you, but you can’t tell what he’s thinking.

Of course you didn’t text back- thinking less is way harder than it seems.

“I wanted to,” you say, “but I got nervous. Sorry.”

You turn back to the sink. It’s a little easier to breathe without having to look at him.

“You got nervous,” he repeats, voice still so unreadable.

Is he mad? He always looks mad, always sounds mad- you can’t ever tell if there’s anything behind it.

“Yeah,” you say, and shrug, like it’s no big deal at all, like you chicken out of things all the time, like texting is always such a cause for concern. “I didn’t know what to say. What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Ugh.

The sink water slowly circles the drain. You don’t look past it, only keeping your eyes on the sink and the remaining brushes- it helps calm your heart, a little. Bucky is probably on the last few tables. All of the paintings have been neatly propped up on the drying racks.

Bucky painted his entire canvas yellow.

You are so dumb.

“Um, okay” you say, shutting off the sink. The really nice brushes are all neatly piled up on the counter on top of a folded paper towel, washed and drying. “What if I was like, ‘hey, Bucky, after this class ends and I’m not your art instructor anymore, would you want to meet up sometime?’”

You turn back around and lean against the sink. It’s an effort that deserves applause- you look so collected, while your heart is beating way too fast, and Bucky, its forever opposite, just stands behind a table, spray bottle in hand.

Your hands are sweaty.

He nods slowly, and it’s a victory in and of itself- the action nearly has you weak at the knees.

“Meet up,” he repeats, voice low, like a halfhearted growl. Disdainful, kind of. “Like a date.”

You wipe your hands on your apron. It’s a totally normal, totally relaxed movement. But then you’re wishing that you wore something cuter- was this sweatshirt really the only thing you had? Do you not own, like, a blouse, or something? Didn’t you just do your laundry?

Fuck, you’re being annoying.

“We don’t have to call it that,” you say. “We can just… hang out. Eat something. Go on a walk.”

You say it casually, but honestly, you like nice dates. Dates at art museums, dates at fusion restaurants, dates at movie theaters showing indie films in foreign languages. Anything eccentric, haphazard. Spontaneous.

But you also like seeing him smile, and you like to talk, and you like to be listened to- and he is giving you that.

This is a different type of everything. It’s all upside down, inside out, twisted over in itself. You have to approach it all differently, maybe it’s because he’s too quiet or too famous or too dangerous or whatever the hell, but none of it matters.

What matters is that you want it.

You’ll realign your compass.

“Okay,” he says. “I like walks.”

“Great,” you say, and go on without hesitating, because long nights have you tired and hesitation is for the weak, “I like you.”

Bucky Barnes, real, unfitting name James, clutching dirty paper towels and a spray bottle, smiles at you.

It’s wrong, but you could just bite him.

A sudden, unprompted thought hurls through your mind- you want to paint him.

***

The last art class.

It was once long-awaited, but now, you’re actually sad to see everyone go.

You buy a tray of cookies. It’s the least you can do- everyone has been so nice to you, so respectful and cooperative. Everyone has made things fun. You don’t know if you were doing anything right, but it sure as hell has been enjoyable.

Crumbs might get in the paint, but’s a small price to pay.

“Knock yourself out,” you announce.

The tray is set out on the middle table. You forgot the package of napkins back at your studio, so you gesture to the paper towel dispenser.

Then you long for the kids in your Wednesday and Thursday classes, because unlike these people, they wouldn’t be looking so dead at the prospect of free cookies.

You shake your head and return to your perch, tucking your feet behind the legs of the stool.

Eventually the conversations trickle out, slowly turning the room warm and lovely and bright. You listen in, a little, savor it, and hop back up. There’s nothing to do- might as well make some idle chitchat, one last time.

Shonna uses a small brush to add purple highlights to the feathers of a pigeon. It’s gorgeous- and you don’t even like pigeons- but you like her painting style and the jewel tones she’s adding amidst the grey, and the orange beak, and the washed-out yellow background she’s painting over.

“Wow,” you say, and she adds another purple highlight with a flick of her hand. “I cannot stop looking at this pigeon.”

“Thank you, honey,” she says, without looking up.

She’s too focused for you to stay for too long- you have to leave the pigeon for others. Marcie waves you down and gives you the latest update about her son, abandoning her half-painted rose while she launches into a bit of a tirade- her son wants to pierce his nose, isn’t that ridiculous?

“Hey, I wanted to pierce my nose when I was his age, too,” you say, and spout something about self-expression that makes her frown.

Ahmed chimes in. You have no idea what the blob he’s painting is supposed to be, but you like it. “I’ve been trying to tell her the same thing! These kids are modern now- these are just the things they do!”

“These are just the things we do,” you echo.

Marcie heaves a heavy sigh.

***

You head over to a few more tables, and it goes by too fast and too slow, but then you’re suddenly there in the back, with your star student, and your…

With Bucky.

“I really like how this is turning out,” Steve says proudly, as you approach them.

Then, he adds, almost childishly, “Don’t look until I’m done.”

He has a half-eaten sugar cookie sitting by his paint water.

“I won’t look” you promise, and all at once, you’re almost emotional- he is such a nice guy. He’s like the human embodiment of a golden retriever. “Don’t worry.”

Steve nods, pleased and nervous at the same time. You pointedly look away from the painting as you slide into a seat, across from Bucky and his yellow canvas.

Yellow and black canvas. He’s hunched over with a fat-bristled paintbrush in hand, adding black stripes, blobby and unevenly spaced, but still unbelievably straight.

It is all so cute.

“Very bumblebee-esque,” you say, and his forehead creases. “I like it.”

Steve smiles.

Bucky adds another line. He didn’t take a cookie. He should’ve- the chocolate-chip is so good.

“Thanks,” he says.

And Steve just smiles wider, and you almost kick him under the table, and Bucky gives you an unsmiling look that turns you to jelly.

Hat aside, he is looking exceptionally pretty today. All hair and eyes and bone structure- it makes you want to do something, like reaching out and grabbing him by the collar of his jacket. Like running a hand over his jaw. Catching his stubble under your fingertips.

Parting his hair down the middle and French braiding it.

Taking a picture- it'll last longer.

“I'm going to miss seeing you guys around.”

Steve gives you a surprised look and shakes his head. He has one arm protectively curled around his canvas, even though you’re still not looking.

“Oh, I’m sure one of us will be seeing you around,” he says, and grins.

You glare at him.

Bucky laughs.

***

The goodbyes aren’t as bad as you thought they would be.

People leave with a simple goodbye and a brief thank you, shrugging on their coats and gingerly clinging to their still-damp artwork. Marcie makes you promise her that you won’t pierce your nose. One woman who would always come to the class with a huge coffee cup sets her painting aside to sweep you into a hug.

It’s very gratifying.

Steve and Bucky linger.

Shonna does, too, but for a completely different reason.

You want to give her Rina’s contact. She probably has some painting class available, if Shonna’s interested in that sort of thing, if she’s okay with being around so much personality.

And you also want to give her your contact- so she can keep on sending you pictures of those birds.

“One sec,” you tell her, and reach for your purse, sitting on the counter.

Bucky is standing closeby, remarkably closeby, and you accidentally brush against him.

He goes rigid.

But you’re busy pulling out a pen and a scrap piece of paper, and then you’re using the counter as a hard surface to write against, shoulders angled away from him, and you’re talking all the while- you don’t have the spare second to be concerned.

“This is my email,” you say, adding a smiley face after the address. “Send me your art. And, like, talk to me. Send me your grocery lists, if you want- I don’t care. Here.”

Shonna takes it and gives you a smile. There’s a glimmer of something in it, a knowing.

“Thank you,” she says, and laughs a little, and you suddenly fiercely miss your mother. “I’ll keep the last bit in mind.”

She looks past you. Steve, standing a few feet away, holding the canvas he still hasn’t shown you, nods respectfully. And Bucky, standing near the counter, still near you, even though he’s looking at you like you’ve scalded him.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says.

You almost ask, “to what?” But she’s already left- Shonna and her pigeons are gone.

Steve steps up fast to take her place.

You still have no time to think.

“So, this is the finished product,” Steve says with no preamble, and with a great flourish that makes you laugh in delight, he turns the canvas around.

Oh.

Wow.

You’re not dizzy.

But you will be, if you keep on looking at this- a tangle of vines on a wall, with blooming flowers in what should be the wrong colors, dappled in light from a window you can’t see, drawn from a strange perspective. The leaves are really big and the vines are really small, and then it’s flip-flopped, and he has a hot-pink underpainting that he didn’t fully cover, so there’s pink in the leaves, pink on the wall. Pink in the un-pink flowers.

“Fuck,” you say, and then go quiet.

Steve tenses.

Now you have two very strong men looking at you weird.

You should probably fix that.

“I don’t- I don’t know what to say,” you say, stumbling over your words, feeling cotton-mouthed. “There are no coherent thoughts going on in my head right now. I’m just- where did this even- how did you even come up with this?”

“I tried to do that thing you said,” Steve says, sounding uncertain. He shifts and the painting moves with him, sending pink flickering over your eyesight. “No empty space. Because it’s boring.”

What is this called, again? Artists supporting artists?

“It is boring,” you say in agreement, and your voice comes back to you, all at once. “And holy shit, you pulled it off so well. I’m obsessed with the pink underpainting- it’s everything. You literally invented pink. And can we talk about these vines? How long did it take you to draw them all tangled up like that? And the flowers- you even gave them little stems, ugh. And all the colors! And this lighting- I’m sorry, I have too much to say.”

Like watching a flower bloom, Steve unfurls at your praise, blush deepening with each compliment. It’s so wonderfully endearing, and internally, you sigh in relief.

“Thank you,” he says, and bursts into the brightest smile you’ve ever seen. “Also, we have one more question.”

“We?” You ask, and Bucky clears his throat.

You turn to him.

Already, you have a whole slew of problems- you have to sketch out an emerging idea and place an order for new brushes, ones with rubber grips, and you have to cook dinner when you get home because lately you’ve been ordering too much takeout, and you have to organize your closet, and you have to give an adequate and peppy response to whatever Steve is about to say-

You’re bursting at the seams.

There isn’t much room for anything else. Any concern.

“You have something to say, Bucky?” You ask, and waggle your eyebrows.

He doesn’t crack a smile- just how you like it.

“I do,” he says, smugly, and then says your name in a way that ties your stomach up in knots, that has you thinking of flowers and chiffon.

“We were wondering if you’re free tomorrow,” Steve says, and then invites you out for drinks, for tomorrow evening.

So you’ve passed the initial threshold of friendship, and now you’re onto group drinking! That’s exciting- and you’ll get to see Bucky, and you’ll get to postpone that tedious process of planning out a date- a hang-out, and you’ll have an opportunity to show up in something besides jeans and sad sweatshirts.

There hasn’t been a chance to show it off to him, yet, but you can dress.

Steve mentions another friend named Sam, who might join, too, if that’s okay with you.

“I’m cool with it,” you say. “The more the merrier, right?”

He has to be a decent guy, if Steve associates with him, and you like new people.

But doesn’t Steve also associate with, like, Tony Stark?

That man is oh-so problematic. He rolls out with a new scandal every month. He’s had enough scandals that he could release a line of red-and-gold-themed calendars- with the dates of each scandal marked in. Each month could have its own photo, too, coinciding with the dates.

Tony Stark, making peace signs at a court hearing. Tony Stark, wasted on a yacht. Tony Stark, in the middle of an interview where he bashes people who have absolutely nothing to do with him.

“That sounds like fun,” you say, and Steve lets out a breath of relief, “but I have to ask, about Sam? Is he, like, a…”

An Avenger? A genetically-altered individual? A prominent public figure with a stupid amount of money?

“He’s a really nice guy,” Steve quickly says.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Bucky says, immediately after him.

***

As it turns out, Sam Wilson is not a pain in the ass.

He is really nice, but more importantly, he is funny.

Bucky texted you the address a few hours ago. You walk into the bar and at once, you’re assaulted by an excess of dark- dark floors, dark lighting, dark accents on the decor. None of it is dingy, just low-lit. It’s a nice place.

It might be a little too nice- nothing like the sticky-floored, rowdy sports-themed bars you usually hit when you’re in the mood to get hammered.

You catch the back of a head, wavy brown hair and thick shoulders, in a booth tucked into the corner. Steve, sitting opposite him, against the wall, catches your eye and waves you over.

Next to Bucky is a guy you’ve never seen before, Sam. Black skin, close-cropped hair, looking over his shoulder to flash a grin at you. Even in a simple shirt, you can tell that he is built.

He’s an Avenger, then. Maybe.

You’ve just barely slid in beside Steve, and you’re grinning and making some dumb comment about the disaster that is the New York subway system, when Sam fixes you with a gleeful look and leans forward.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says, casting a side-eye at Bucky. “I’m not joking when I say this- I was starting to think that Barnes made you up. He’s always doing crazy shit like that. Anyways, you will not believe why I’m actually here.”

You humor him, because why the hell not? “Why are you actually here?”

Already, you can tell that he has that vaguely-ironic, purposely-stupid sense of humor, which you always find absolutely hilarious. And you want to know what he means by crazy shit.

Bucky looks up at you for a few charged seconds, telling you something you can’t decipher, and then ducks his hand back down to stare intensely at his drink. Something amber, with ice cubes.

“I’m here to make sure that you don’t feel bad. Because these two fossils,” Sam says, and Steve winces, “can’t get drunk. But I can! So if you wanna get trashed, I’m game.”

Under the dimmed lights, Sam’s teeth shine perfectly white. All of Steve’s friends seem to have perfectly white teeth.

“It’s because of the serum,” Steve says, and you just gawk.

They both can’t get drunk?

Because of their fucking superhero vaccine?

“What the hell,” you say, and rest your elbows on the tabletop. Bucky’s gaze follows your arms, starting at the hems of the sleeves, trailing up to your shoulders. “That’s so… Steve, if you can’t get drunk, then why are you torturing yourself with that beer?”

“It’s for the feeling,” Steve says quietly, blushing pink, and Bucky is still quiet, and you have a feeling that this has something to do with nostalgia, or World War II, or something. The good old days.

Sam catches it too, so he buts in, quickly bringing the conversation back to something less layered, less wired.

He’s a man with nothing to hide. He tells you who he is with no hesitation, without trying to skip over or disguise anything- he’s open. He’s a war vet, too, and now an Avenger- he’s the Falcon. He has, he says, a pair of fancy-ass wings. And the coolest outfit.

“Wait,” you say, and you’re suddenly dying to know, “what does it feel like to fly?”

His eyes light up.

“You know when you’re trying to sleep, and then you randomly get that feeling that you’re falling, and your stomach does that thing?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that, but you can control it. It’s fucking amazing.”

He launches into a whole spiel, talking your ear off about the feeling of high-altitude wind on his skin and aerodynamics and some science-y things you don’t understand, and you get your own beer and enjoy the sweet feeling of getting buzzed on a weeknight, and as the edge you constantly have on yourself shifts, the seats shift, too.

You don’t know how, but you end up next to Bucky, in between him and the wall. Not touching, but close. Sam is across from you and Steve is next to him, and all of a sudden they’re talking about Chex Mix.

“If the Avengers were Chex Mix pieces,” Sam says, throwing the word Avenger around casually enough to make Steve’s hesitations seem horrendously uptight, “I would be the garlic chip. The best part of the whole damn bag. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah, those chips are definitely the best part,” you say, adopting a mock-seriousness. “And Tony Stark would be one of those knobby-ass, crunchy little mini breadsticks.”

Sam mirrors your expression, nodding gravely, like what you’re both evaluating is a highly intellectual subject. “I completely agree. And for Rogers- man, you’re a pretzel.”

You narrow your eyes. “Square or circle?”

“Uh,” Sam says, turning to survey poor, unprepared Steve, looking equal parts bewildered and embarrassed. “Square.”

“Great choice. And Bucky?”

“Bucky…” Sam hesitates, and the briefest smile flashes over his face before he schools his expression back into objectivity, “Bucky is one of those original Chex squares. Sorry.”

“That’s cold,” you say, and Sam smiles again, and leans all the way back in his seat, bringing his hands behind his head.

“He’s not one of the yellow squares, though- those are actually good,” Sam starts, grin growing wider by the second, and you can’t tell if it would be rude to laugh. “He’s not one of those squares with extra seasoning, either. Bucky is just one of the plain brown squares. The wheat squares, or whatever the hell. Have you ever, like- have you ever wondered what the sole of a shoe tastes like? Or the eraser on top of a pencil? That’s what those taste like- that’s what he is. Just one of the plain Chex squares.”

Your jaw drops.

A roast like that from a halfway drunk man is absolutely scathing.

Bucky just levels a glare.

He’s used to this, you think. Is that his crazy shit? That he never reacts to anything?

You’re definitely a little tipsy- this is obviously no time to get wasted, but the edge has certainly been taken off, the corners of your world having gone hazy. In a lull, you watch a well-dressed man standing by the vestibule doors lean past your field of vision and receive what you think is a kiss on the cheek.

Without thinking, you lean close to Bucky and cup a hand over his ear.

Maybe he won’t react, maybe he will, but you’re not going to give him the time for either.

“I think that you’re the garlic chip,” you whisper loudly, and you’ll probably cringe yourself into oblivion over it when you're sober, but you think he shivers- and then he snorts.

“Thank you,” he says, and Sam putters out, giving you an amazed look.

***

“Heyyy,” you say later, turning to Bucky, when time has passed and you’re no longer on the subject of Chex Mix and he’s still a little too quiet. “What’s up?”

He’s quiet and troubled, drinking what might be whiskey like it’s water. Is it whiskey? You didn’t think that people actually drank whiskey- just kept it around in crystal decanters and silver flasks to look cool, like they’re main characters in a movie.

“The sky,” he says dryly, like you didn’t say that same exact shit when you were in middle school, hopelessly thinking that it was the slickest comeback.

“Very funny, James,” you say, and he huffs, and you feel a brief flash of panic, and then you’re almost apologizing, when he grins.

You know maybe three whole things about him, but you’ll press yourself up against him right here and now, under the low light of a fancy bar, with rain sliding down outside the window panes, with his friends right across the table. You don’t care.

His friends can tell.

“We’ll be right back,” Steve says suddenly, making a very showy display of getting up with Sam. Both of them send you obnoxious grins and suggestively raised eyebrows.

Bucky glares. You can’t stop smiling.

“You kids have fun,” Sam calls, and you laugh.

Just you and him, then. The mood shifts fast, turning from one thing to… another. Bucky’s eyes reflect the window outside, falling dark and darker, and you’re slipping, too.

“You look really nice,” Bucky says, and his eyes dip down in the slyest fucking move- you’re almost proud of him for it, for having such game.

A spark of heat flashes through you, as he takes you in slowly, like he’s trying to savor it.

You opted for a slightly tighter shirt, and a pair of jeans, but they’re your nice jeans. The ones without any weird streaks of paint on the thighs. And you wear a beaded necklace, and in your ears, a pair of fun, delicate hoop earrings, dangling with charms in the shape of crescent moons.

“Thanks,” you lean back, into the wall, letting your voice drop to match the tone of his. “You do, too.”

He just stares at you, unamused. Still dark, and dangerous.

Purple chiffon, you think, and marigolds. The flower was meant for another friend, but she’ll have to manage, because now, you can only see Bucky with marigolds, with no room for anyone else.

“So,” you say, before the silence carries on and makes you do something stupid, “Done anything fun lately?”

He tenses. Again.

There’s all these things that you know you can’t ask him, things about his job and his hobbies and his metal fucking arm, which you still haven’t seen- which you’re fine with, but, like. It’s the fact that he has a metal arm in the first place- he is so detached from everything you know, and you aren’t sure if you know how to navigate it all. You don’t think he knows how to navigate it, either.

He’s hesitant, you think. But not unwilling.

You’re just going to roll with it.

”I watched a movie today,” he says, sounding so smooth that your clutch on your drink wavers. His eyes are raking you over, cold.

Red marigolds. Not the orange ones. Red marigolds with the little golden borders on the edges of each petal.

“Which movie?”

He shakes his head. “I forgot the name”

“Okay, well, what was it about?”

“Talking dogs.”

You laugh and he smiles, and then you feel light enough to float. “Talking dogs?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he takes a sip. His mouth is very pink. Layers, you think, layers and overlapping, to make the fabric look hazy. Washed-out. “They talk when their owners aren’t home.”

“That sounds right up your alley,” you say, and you’re giggly and he’s all smiley and maybe you’re being embarrassing, but whatever, because he’s looking at you like he’s never been smiley with anyone else before, and you really, really want to lean in.

You’ll wait.

***

Sam comes back with Steve a little bit later, but it isn't until you’re getting ready to leave when he brings it up.

“You’re good for him,” Sam says, while Bucky and Steve have gone to pay. Your drinks are on him- how chivalrous. “Honestly, you’re probably too good for him.”

You laugh as you shrug on your jacket. “Doubt it.”

“No, I’m serious,” he says, voice dropping to an urgent whisper. You realize at once that he’s about to say something heavy, something concerning. “He has been through some fucked-up shit. It’s not his fault, obviously, but it’s always there. He’s never going to get over it. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep. He just stays awake, for like, three whole days at a time. Sometimes he just disappears. He never tells anyone where he goes. Sometimes he does this thing where he-”

“I get it,” you say quickly, and he must be able to see your sudden dread, because his face softens.

“I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to know- that that’s what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Thanks,” you say, and zip up your coat, and then pat your pockets even though you know you have everything, just so you have an excuse to not say anything. Sam gives you a long look, before sighing and pulling out his phone.

Obviously, Sam is trying to tell you that Bucky is damaged.

You’re not in the business of fixing things, but you’ll take him as he is anyway, because...

“Sam?” you say, and he looks up from his phone.

“Sometimes,” you start, and swallow down whatever anxiety is starting to surface, “Sometimes he’s being all quiet and moody and angsty and whatever, I get that same feeling that you’re telling me. But then, like, he just does something. Like, he’ll make a joke, or say something, and then it’s like-”

You struggle with your words- it’s like everything you want to say is there, but you can’t reach it. Sam slides his phone into his pocket, and Bucky is coming back, with Steve in tow, moon and sun, peas in a pod. You wonder if Sam makes their duo a trio, if he’s the third invitee to their slumber party, or if he’s just on the fringes.

“It’s like- It’s like, okay. Like, I know who he is and it’s all okay.”

He nods, and smiles at you, and you sincerely hope that he isn’t just on the fringes.

***

The paintings of your parents are finished- and they are good. So good. Every detail is there, every color. Every line. The wrinkles and the flowers and the lace neckline of your mother’s dress. Looking at them makes you feel so proud- it’s been forever since you were able to properly convey your thoughts onto canvas.

They’re big, too. Larger than life. You’ll have to rent one of those orange U-Haul trailers to transport them.

On a new canvas is Rina, only halfway painted. She looks good too, even though right now she’s just a head and a torso and two floating feet, because getting the colors on her legs right is harder than you thought. It’s tricky to paint the shadows and contours without her legs just looking bruised- there’s so many flower stems overlapping with the skin, so you don’t have a lot of room to work with.

You’ll figure it out.

You might be a little in over your head, actually. Confident- a little too confident. You don’t even have this painting done, and you’re itching to start on another. A possible recipe for disaster, but every time you have a spare second, in the shower or on the subway or when you’re trying to fall asleep, you find yourself thinking about it.

Not in bits and pieces the way most of your thoughts are, but a fully formed concept; a real, true image brimming with fullness, already starting to spill over into everything you do.

You have it all figured out. You know what techniques you’ll use. What composition, what colors.

You text Bucky.

Nothing crazy. You know you could scare him off, or maybe not, not anymore- by the end of the night at the bar last week, you sat next to him and bumped up against him and whispered in his ear, and right before you left he flicked the charm on your earring, watched it sway, and then he smirked- and you almost died.

You text him Hey, and then set your phone on the farthest surface you can find, pointedly avoiding it. Rina’s calves need attention- you have paint to mix.

Ten minutes later, your phone rings.

You can’t help it, you’re weak-hearted- you drop everything and dash to your phone, dodging your carts of supplies and hopping over a stack of toppled canvases that you never bothered to pick up, and pick up on the third ring.

“Hi,” you say into the receiver, slightly out of breath.

“Hi,” he says, and he sounds slightly out of breath, too.

“Um,” you say, and laugh a little, with the heady rush of nerves flooding in, “I wasn’t expecting you to call.”

“I called because I’m a slow texter,” Bucky says.

You feel so fluttery. When was the last time you felt this fluttery?

“Oh. That’s okay. I was just wondering if you... wanted to meet up sometime soon? Tomorrow, maybe?”

Tomorrow is Saturday, a day off. For you, at least- do Avengers get days off?

“Okay,” he says, and you swear he sounds pleased. You want to cut straight to something else. Skip, jump, leap over all of these steps, so you can get to what you really want to tell him. “I think I can do that. Where are we meeting?”

“There’s this little cafe we can… we can head there first, I’ll text you the address, but I have this idea,” you say, and wait for his invitation to continue, with your heart beating dangerously fast, thrumming like it might just burst through your ribs.

“What’s your idea?”

Thank you, you almost say, but don’t.

The steps are skipped, formalities disregarded- you just tell him.

It’s the perfect time- there’s that currently rare, pretty daylight that grows with each passing day streaming in through your windows unfiltered, blocked by no blinds or curtains. You pace a little, at first, right in the sun, and then sit down on a stool, toeing the smooth wood floors beneath, cradling the phone.

You start it off simple, with the marigolds.

Red marigolds, you specify, because you feel like you have to. Then you delve deeper, into chiffon and lighting and this thing you want to try out with layering, where two elements that overlap go by a completely different color scheme. Like, you say, like the flowers are red and the clothes are black, but the places where they meet are electric pink or orange or blue or something else unusual and distracting.

Save for the sound of his breathing, Bucky is quiet. You can tell that he’s really listening, probably sitting down somewhere and focusing on you, not doing some other task with your voice as background noise. He doesn’t interrupt when you go off on a tangent about the importance of natural lighting or contradict yourself with opposing statements on color choice, or when your words start to deteriorate, when they start pouring out so fast that they slur together and become less than coherent.

Your mind is going even faster- you can see the image even when you blink.

Something at the back of your thoughts tells you to stop, to slow down. You need to chill out.

But the idea is so vivid, so you can’t- you don’t, not until the idea is totally exhausted and you give a final sigh and go quiet, not until after giving what could count as an entire fucking speech.

When Bucky speaks again, he sounds tentative.

“I… like it,” he says, and maybe he’s holding his phone at a bad angle, because his voice is quiet.

“You do?” You say, instead of asking something else, with a sudden bad feeling in your gut.

“Yeah. But…”

You know what he says without him having to say it.

It feels like you’ve been punched.

The picture behind your eyelids burns brighter.

“That’s okay,” you say in response to his unsaid words, speaking too late, so that it's obvious that it’s not okay.

Your heart is sinking, as if it has any right to, as if he’s in the wrong. How did you go from high to low so fast?

You scared him. You put too much pressure on him too fast- it’s exactly what Sam said, that he’s all levels of wary and weird, and little things can set him off, because of everything that he’s been through-

Even if he was someone else, though, even if he was normal, he would still say no- anyone would say no to being given such a request out of nowhere.

Well, Rina didn’t, but she doesn’t count in this situation, does she?

“Sorry,” he says.

That hurts worse.

“Don’t apologize,” you say quickly. “It’s not like it’s not going to work now- I mean, it’ll be fine. Are you still down to meet, though?”

“Sure,” he says, too late.

***

Bucky Barnes does not like anything in his coffee.

He takes it black, black like his clothes, black like his soul, black like whatever other emo shit you can come up with.

It’s not that funny anymore.

Still, you keep up with it- you’re funny and talkative and charming and everything else, because you don’t know what else to do. The subject will be broached, it’s inevitable- you’ll broach it, even, but you still have to figure out how.

He’s subdued. And wearing his stupid hat, again, and you would give anything to knock it off so you could really see him, and he’s cautiously cradling his mug in a way that makes you ache everywhere.

The cafe is busy and decorated with a specific aesthetic, one that you would call manufactured bohemian. Potted plants and quirky photographs and drinks that all have fancy and ridiculous names. The baristas wear yellow aprons, and if you have a membership card, every tenth purchase gets you a free sugar cookie iced with a smiling sun.

Your cappuccino foam is dissolving. Sometimes, even though it’s mostly tasteless, you swipe it up and eat it with a spoon. Today, it seems like a bad idea- frivolous in the face of his silence and your unmotivated charisma and this stupid idea lingering between you two, like a friend that’s overstayed their welcome.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out, and wonder why you feel so jumpy for saying it. “For bringing that thing up yesterday.”

To your own credit, you still sound confident.

He looks at you so darkly that you wonder if you should be afraid. Have there ever been others in your seat, afraid?

You’re not afraid.

“It’s fine,” he says, and continues staring at you like it’s not fine.

“I’m just- I was just thinking out loud,” you say. You feel like you have to explain yourself, prove something to him, so that you won’t wilt. “It was just an idea that I thought could be cool. I told you because, no , wait. I mean, I know that I- fuck. I’m sorry that it made you uncomfortable. That was really dumb of me.”

He tilts his head, eyes sliding over, and you shiver.

He looks bored.

Which is unnerving and terrifying as hell, because you have this carefully hand-crafted, precisely-cut image of who you are supposed to be, and it is not meant to be boring in the slightest, but he's bored, and you’re going to lose it.

“I said it’s fine,” he says, monotonously, giving the sudden impression that he’s about to leave. But he’s just sitting in his seat, unwrapping his hands from his mug and setting them on the table, while your hands are on the verge of shaking. “It didn't make me uncomfortable.”

If that was true, then you wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. You wouldn’t be stumbling over yourself to say something so simple.

It takes considerable effort to keep your gaze steady. “Okay. But I still- I just want to say a thing really quick.”

“Say it.”

He’s being mean.

But this thing has been eating at you for a while now, so you don’t care.

“Um, so, we’re really different people,” you start, and before you second-guess it, you adopt your speaker voice, the teaching voice, the smart one. He has to know this about you- you’re smart. “And you obviously have all of your own things going on in your life that I can’t even imagine, and if you ever want to, like, talk about it, I’m here, but I also don’t care.”

He raises an eyebrow.

You push on.

“Like, it’s not important to me. If you want it to be, then it’ll be, but if not, then it’s whatever. I'm not- when I see you, I just see you. Does that make sense? Like, I don’t really think of any of that other stuff? If I’m supposed to, though, I’m sorry. I… I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

You don’t get nervous often, but you let out a small, nervous laugh.

It’s like your heart and head and lungs are suspended, frozen in ice while he takes your words in. The door to the cafe chimes and a large group of people step in. Middle aged women, all wearing athletic clothes. Devil’s ivy grows on the wall farthest from you- how chic- with vines snaking forward in your direction, reaching for you in green and streaky white.

He smiles.

All you see is teeth and creased eyes and a low, uncreased brow- you want to kiss him.

“Tell me the idea again,” he says, and leans back in his seat. He crosses his arms, and you watch his forearms shift and strain against his shirt, and then you clear your throat and look away and try to focus.

You inhale and gather everything, hoping that this time, you’ll be able to make it make sense.

***

One thing spirals into another. Your words were building and building, rising like a crescendo, overwhelming you to the point where you just said it outright, and-

He’s now in your apartment.

He is literally in your apartment.

You watch him survey the area- the clutter, the mismatched furniture, the crooked posters and photos and artwork hung up on the walls. The subpar paint on the walls that you didn’t choose, the cabinets made of old wood with newly replaced handles.

The entire place is creaking, becoming worse for the wear with each passing day. You could probably afford nicer, but it doesn’t matter, because you love it here- you’ve formed an emotional attachment that goes beyond sad paint and constant repairs. Your home is cozy.

But right now, with Bucky in here, it’s suddenly cramped.

“I want you to sit over here,” you say, and facing a great window, rounded on top with those gorgeous little decorative swirls, which is your favorite part of the whole place, is an armchair. It’s a steal you found at an antique store, with little tassels lining the back of the seat, upholstered with the tackiest floral print you’ve ever seen, but it’s perfect for what you’re trying to do.

The sun is shining strong and unfiltered- he’ll be lit up.

Bucky sits. He looks on edge, and beautiful.

You want to make this easy for him. But you might be too swept away in him to make any efforts- you’re still in shock that he agreed to this in the first place, so disoriented with him being here, in your place, that your trains of thought keep on derailing.

You’re closer than you wish you were, closer to losing it.

“Perfect. Give me one second.”

You go to your room, which isn’t really a room but a sectioned-off alcove with a bit of wall blocking it from view, no door- weird architecture, but whatever, to retrieve your supplies. Tape and the neatly folded swatches of fabric and your camera.

Photography isn’t your thing, but you need reference material.

When you return, he’s looking pensive, and dazzling. His arms fall tensely on the sides of the chair, but his hands dangle so gracefully, and the light catches his face and colors it golden- you are going to lose it when it comes to painting his eyes. They’re blue, but you see them as suns.

“You look great,” you say, and he blushes. You’re ready to pounce, right now.

The fabric is a little bit awkward. It has to be draped upon him- Bucky bristles at your actions in a way that tells you he’s never done anything even remotely like this before, but you persist, and he lets you.

“Get out of the chair really quick.”

“Okay.”

Bucky gets out of the chair. You hop up on it, to tape the corners of the fabric to the ceiling. It’s a flimsy attempt, but they hold and flutter just fine.

He takes you by the hand to bring you back down.

“Careful,” he says, as you make the daunting two-and-a-half-foot descent, and he squeezes your hand in his gloved one before you make him sit down again.

You are buzzing with electricity. Another point to him- that was smooth.

The loose ends of the fabric are tricky, You try at first to tape them to the back of the chair, moving back behind him to reach. Bucky’s head stays perfectly still, and the chiffon looks wrong. It looks weirdly stiff.

So you drape one on him like planned, sort of dripping down his shoulder in a bunched-up purple river, and let the other hang freely, swaying a little from the fragility of the tape.

You move back around to face him.

“This is perfect,” you say, and grin, because this is finally happening. “You look perfect.”

He’s staring all intensely again. You want to come close to him, tell him how lovely he looks, straight out of a dream. You’re so pretty, you almost say, but you have some semblance of rational thought left in you- and so you stay quiet.

The camera dangles from its strap around your neck. You take it in your hands and power it on. The settings are adjusted, and you fiddle with the shutter speed and focus and everything else before bringing it close to your eye, expecting this dream-

He’s all tense, again.

It’s the lens, you immediately think, even though that doesn’t really make sense. You look like- you look like him when he does his things. Lenses and targets and crosshairs. How is this thought so immediate?

You’re just trying to take a picture.

“Relax,” you say, and it does absolutely nothing.

“I am relaxed,” he bites out.

He’s really not. There’s something shifting in his face, something discontented, a brewing storm. His hands are starting to harshly curl into the armrests, digging at the upholstery, distorting the flowers.

The chiffon looms.

“Fix your hands. Like, move them- no, turn them back,”

You’re stooping over to fully capture him, almost ready to take a knee.

His hands flex and stay as they are, stressed and taut and not right, and the rest of him is still so-

You bring the camera down.

***

He’s in this ugly chair, surrounded by fabric, and you’re pretty and wearing a pale pink sweater, and you’re aiming a camera at him, for a picture, but he feels like a target.

White-hot adrenaline and cold and dark dread pull at both sides of him. He feels like a total mess.

Is this they all felt- how they all feel, when he is aiming at them? He tries to do things differently, now, but the tragedy still takes place, the trigger is still fired- the deed is still done. Karma, he thinks, retracing its path, coming back to bite him through you.

You’re frowning. He wants to apologize.

You take the camera down and let it dangle from the strap at your neck. He just had your hands in his- he wants them back and wants to get as far away from you as possible.

“This isn’t working,” you say, and straighten back up, placing your hands on your hips. You look powerful, and he might be trembling from clenching his jaw so hard. “You are not relaxed.”

“I’m not,” he agrees, and you sigh and fix him with a look that isn’t pity- he’d bolt if it were pity, but steely resolve.

You take the camera off your neck, and gently bend over to set it on the floor. Then you sit down beside it, wincing as your knee makes a noise, and giving him a bemused little smile that he wants to just-

Your head level with his knees as you sit, cross-legged. Hands splayed over your lower thighs, careless and carefree. Your posture slouches a bit, relaxing the way he is not, and it's relieving.

His hands grip the chair like a lifeline.

“Why isn’t this working?” You ask, more yourself than him. “You were so- nevermind. Or, Let’s… um, wait. Maybe- Can I?”

He’s always thought of you as so put-together, a born speaker, but now you’ve been stammering and stuttering all over his heart, and he doesn’t know what to do.

You reach out with your hand, hesitantly, wavering. The scar smiles pink.

He nods- his head nods, his body is moving outside of itself, and he feels sheltered and exposed, nearly covered in purple fabric and vulnerable and sitting above you, all of him bared for you to see. Hot and cold.

Your hand goes on his knee.

He’s so alarmed that he almost lashes out- he wants to think, but you’re giving him no time to-

Your other hand is reaching out, tugging at his own, and you bring yourself up to your knees and lean back on the balls of your feet, balancing. Your head is still below his chest and tilted so he can’t see your eyes, and you’re holding his hand like it’ll break.

There’s a dry-erase board fastened on the opposite wall, next to all of the other eclectic clutter. It’s filled in with a to-do list- the words COOK SOMETHING are scrawled at the top in angry red marker. He focuses on the words as you play with his fingers.

You gently trace a thumb over the ridges of his knuckles; he’s suddenly so ticklish that he flinches and chokes on a word that he doesn’t know how to say.

You nudge his hand over to the side, drape the fingers down, and your other hand is still burning his knee, setting him alight-

You’re molding him. Setting him to look how you want, manhandling him in the softest way possible. Should this feel violating? Rude? It feels good- purposeful. He’s letting you do this, and his heart is beating hard, but he can still hear your breathing and his breathing and the white noise of the traffic on the street below, stories away.

You take your hand off his knee, and nudge at his left hand, and he thinks now, how fucking stupid this is- if it’s his fucking hand, why does he wear this stupid fucking glove?

He goes to work it off and you understand, and if he wasn’t wanting so badly to be still for you, stay here as you take your picture, he would grab you by the necklace you’re wearing and drag you closer.

The glove is pulled off and dropped to the floor and the silver of his hand winks in the sunlight.

“Oh,” you say softly, and there’s a crack in your voice, and his voice would crack too, if you asked him to speak.

There’s this look on your face. He doesn’t know if you want to hold his hand or kiss it or put his fingers in your mouth, it looks like all three and he is all unfurled, too, because he is sitting back in this ugly armchair and you’re holding his hands again, and you’re backlit by the sun- like a vision sent straight from the sky.

You fix his hands.

This feels intimate- more intimate than kissing, or anything else. This feels like skipping steps.

After a moment, you pry your hands off of his, and lean back.

Wordlessly, you take the camera and stand up, and you fiddle it and back up, back to where you were at first, far away. Then you’re bringing it close to your eye, looking at him through a lens, and the shutter clicks once, twice.

You bring it back down.

“You got it?” He says, and his voice sounds rough- he sounds parched.

You look at its little screen and bite your lip. “Yeah.”

“Can you come here for a second?”

You look up at him and he’s glad that he couldn’t see your eyes before- they’re dark. “Yeah.”

The camera is tossed to the side, again, and you walk like you’re floating. The steps have been skipped, but Bucky will have to go back to them anyway- he doesn’t like to leave any stones unturned-

And so he waits until you’re close enough, and then tugs you down by your sweater- he doesn’t want to hurt you, and he’s reaching and reaching-

You laugh or smile or do something else sweet, but he’s too caught up to tell. He pulls you down to him, and surrounded by you and sunlight and fluttering purple chiffon, he kisses you.

41 notes · View notes

gayerluke · 6 years ago

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so i’ve been meaning to write about this for almost a week now since it happened early tuesday morning, but i’ve been burying myself in hyperfixation hell to distract from the utter shock & devastation of it. but i owe my friends on main to talk about it bc i know you guys care about me & my little family.

tw for animal death

my rat patrick passed away extremely suddenly & unexpectedly in the middle of the night between monday & tuesday. he was euthanized at the ER & went peacefully. i wasn’t with him during the actual moment (protocol with small animals is different because they use a different method) but i gave him a lot of love right before they took him back.

both rats were completely FINE early monday. they were active & behaving normally, like little scamps. i came in late that night to check them before bed. david was his normal self, climbing up the cage bars to come see me. patrick, however, was curled up in a little ball, fur all puffed out, eyes squinted: classic sick rat pose. i picked him up & he was awake & responsive, but didn’t squirm like he normally would. his breathing was extremely labored. to me it seemed like an upper respiratory infection, but it’s unusual for them to come on so suddenly -- usually you’ll see mild symptoms building up over the course of maybe a week before it gets this bad (i would’ve definitely begun treatment well before he had reached the state he was in). URIs can usually be treated with simple antibiotics/anti-inflammatories, which needs to be supplemented with a probiotic bc rats are hindgut fermentors who need the beneficial bacteria to digest. but i knew this was bad enough that he needed to go to the ER bc he needed oxygen.

took both rats with me to help reduce the stress for them. this was about 3am. the person who opened the door for me was someone i know from school, of course, bc there’s literally nowhere in town i can go without someone i know working there. it’s fine though bc she was kind of a calming presence & also they can tell the doctor im a tech so they dont dumb it down for me. they took him back right away & took vitals; breathing was labored like i said but he was also hypothermic with a temp of 96; normal is 100-102.5, same as a dog or cat. they put him in an incubator with heat & oxygen. took x-rays, found fluid in the lungs but also AROUND the lungs, known as pleural effusion.

it was at this point that i knew it was not a simple URI but something really really bad. i associate pleural effusion with heart disease; fluid builds up in the institial spaces when blood isn’t being pumped properly. the dr said the fluid could either be pus from infection, blood from trauma, or free fluid (water basically) from a cardiac abnormality, likely congenital given his age. the only way to know for sure was a thoracentesis (chest tap) for $2,000, which didn’t guarantee anything except diagnosis of the type of fluid, & could also cause further damage. just sending him home on antibiotics wasn’t going to work unless we knew it was an infection & could jeopardize his health even further. she also revealed that she didn’t want to do outpatient bc she really didn’t think he’d survive very long outside of the oxygen cage. i was there for several hours just trying to come to a decision. ultimately i chose to let him go. he was only 3 months old.

i elected to have a necropsy performed on site free of charge (as opposed to sending it out to the big lab for more precise diagnosis). i had to call the vet 4 times to finally get ahold of the attending doctor to get the report; the 4th time i called i sobbed on the phone to the receptionist. waiting was the worst fucking part. finally got to talk to her yesterday. the ER vet’s best guess was a congenital heart defect; however the vet who did the necropsy found that it was in fact a severe infection. i can’t help blaming myself & wondering if he could’ve been saved if i’d just taken him home on the antibiotic meds, or if it could’ve been prevented if i’d taken better care of him.

i’ve been a complete wreck since then, breaking down in sobs a lot. i didn’t sleep for 4 days. but the absolute worst part of all this is david. rats are social animals; they CANNOT live alone. human companionship isn’t enough. now i put him in his carrier & set it out on the couch or bed with a towel down so he can hang out with me for 6-8 hours a day. but he’s too nervous to come out of the carrier (patrick was always the investigative one who’d let david know when it was safe). he mostly sleeps all day. he is not eating much if anything & i’m trying to keep track of any weight loss, though he does seem to eat a bit with the emergency nutrical smeared on his kibble.

so now i’m at a crossroads: i either get another rat, which i’m not totally sure i want to do, or re-home him. the necropsy results help me determine that, because they’re most likely littermates so if patrick had a heart defect david could too.

again, i’ve been in stasis the last 5 days but now i have to make a tangible plan. at this point i’m leaning towards getting a second rat; david & i have bonded so much over this experience that i don’t want to give him away & really, 2 rats aren’t much more work than one. i might go back to the reptile store where they’re from to see if the owner (who i know) will just give me another one with good temperament.

but first david needs a vet appointment to see if he has any evidence of infection setting in, or if he should have prophylactic antibiotics. the cage & room need a deep clean. technically i could get a new rat right now since i’d want to quarantine both of them for 2 weeks, but unfortch i’m flying to fucking portland again next friday. i need to find where to board him.

sorry this is so long but i’ve really been Processing it all. i’ve spent all week in shock. for the first 2 days i couldn’t look at david without breaking down in full-on sobs. patrick was only 3 months. he was doing so well & becoming a big boy. i’m heartbroken. but i’m determined to still give david a good life.

#animal death -#pet death -

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cuckariki · 6 years ago

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kinda depresses me that my entire life plan from now on revolves around my pets. horrible thoughts under the cut.

don’t get me wrong, i love them. a lot. my stupid fucking birds, my idiot dog, they’ve kept me from ending it all. but like... as stupid as this is, i wish my parents were more responsible and didn’t let me get some of them when i was so young.

my parents are spiteful and overemotional with no self-control. when they started splitting up, everything in my life that was initially banned -- video games, non-cat pets, fast food, all that shit -- became a token of “being the cool parent.” whatever one parent could do to undermine the other was fair game. my mom bought my sister a dog right before she stole my dad’s shit and moved out, and left the untrained little shit to ruin our lives and only wanted to see the “fun parts” of having a dog, so she’d kidnap it and take it to the beach off-leash and let it attack other dogs and steal people’s shit. the same dog took a huge chunk out of my leg when i was in elementary school, and would try and drag me into the street because i was the only person who would ever try to walk it.

and eventually, birds. my mom’s side of the family is home to one of the worst crazy bird women the world has ever seen, having over 25 large parrots when i was born, which have deteriorated into just 2 in just 20 years because one african gray has killed most of them in self-defense. my dad hated them, because most of them were untrained and aggressive and attacked him and me when we’d go over to the house, and vowed never to let me have them in his house.

nine birds later, here we are. he actually caved at bird number six, which is his favorite, and bought bird number nine because he felt bad for him. which is still bad, obviously, because now we have nine birds.

my family doesn’t take care of them. the same shit with the first dog, really. they want the glory, the cute, flying animals around the house that make cute noises and eat out of your hand. they don’t want to clean up after them, or to cage them properly, or to traumatize them by trimming their nails or locking them up for the night or taking them to the vet. nobody in this family cares for animals properly, actually, but it sucks the most with the birds because until i want to take them with me, they’re “my problem.”

and i’ve accepted that. along with my dog, the best and only dog i’ve ever not been terrified, i want to leave with the birds. i want to take these animals away from my family and show them what actual care is. the dog’s gonna get real toys, real training, and real discipline, and the birds are going to get a room all to themselves. not saying they don’t automatically deserve it, but after all the shit they’ve seen, they deserve the best.

which still sucks.

i’ve gotta buy a truck for my first car. probably a tundra, because it’s high-mileage in the sense someone eating at taco bell instead of mcdonalds is healthy. i can fit 5 bird cages, a dog crate, and a futon in it with only a little bit of stress. also, the dog. who will probably, and hopefully, be the only person i will ever have to let sit in the front seat, because unlike most people, she actually takes her stupid filthy feet off the upholstery when you ask her to.

which’ll be fun. seven thousand dollars for a used car that i have to learn to drive in. at least if it crashes, i’ll survive. probably. hopefully.

and i’m gonna have to buy a two-bedroom apartment to separate the birds from the dog. i’m not worried about the birds, if i can even get an apartment, because landlords like to ignore them. the dog, however, according to most landlords, eats children and goes to satanic worship every tuesday night. which my family probably should have accounted for before they bought her and halfheartedly decided she should go with me when i moved out.

maybe the landlord’s gonna be dumb enough to think she’s a husky, or something. or a shiba inu. just a jacked up shiba inu.

i mean, what other option do i have? i’m not gonna leave these guys with my family.

i’m literally more confident euthanizing the dog before i leave if i can’t take her. as morbid as it is, i’m serious. she’s dangerous in the wrong hands. if my family was... any other family, she’d be dead already. she’s bitten everyone but me because they’ve dangled food in front of her face or stuck their heads too close when she was angry. “she’s just playing” only goes so far when you’re talking about a dog bred to kill bears and bite through armor. at least if she died now, nobody would hurt her in self-defense. she’d go peacefully, not someone shooting her or kicking her face in after she attacked them.

i don’t wanna make myself sound like some dog whisperer, because i’m not, but there’s a formula you have to follow with an akita, and it’s “don’t treat it like a dog.” an akita is a gross little toddler who’s going to undermine your authority at every opportunity available until you (unfortunately, possibly, literally) beat it into them that you are in charge and they are just a stupid little toddler. except the toddler weighs more than you and has historically killed huge ass animals with its mouth.

this worked out fine for the first few months, when my family understood that the dog was dangerous, but after i started having to stay late for work and shit, neeks just became another cute cuddly disney dog that didn’t need to be fed on time or walked or dragged by the scruff inside when she got off the leash. her misbehaving was charming to them. and sure, they treated the old dog like that, because it never bit them or tackled them, and it being “naughty” was just a fun little quirk.

the dog, though, can defend herself. not the birds. my mom and sister have already hit them before. my old, blind rescue bird, the one that my family foolishly let me get, is traumatized beyond belief and then some. he was bad enough before us, now he’s hopeless. he just wants to be alone all day, and if you’re lucky, he’ll sleep on the same side of the cage closest to you.

he, and the other birds, unlike the dog, can’t chew their way out of the house and go be feral and eat squirrels or toddlers for sustenance. if they get neglected, they are 100% dead. they’re going to starve or die of respiratory infections because nobody cleans the cages.

kinda wish i didn’t have to deal with this shit. but also, kinda love all my pets. and if i’m gonna be better than my family, it means taking all of them with me and doing better.

#ken rant #bird #birb #birblr #parrot #animal abuse #dog #dogblr #akita

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retro-pure-jdonica · 7 years ago

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Chapter 35

Friday seems to drag along just as slowly as Monday had, probably due to the anticipation of the weekend. Majority of the Westerburg student body seemed to not be too affected, seen as the cafeteria was filled with loud energetic conversations.

"First lunchtime poll after fall break." Heather Chandler smiles, slapping a piece of paper and a clipboard down on our table. "Are you ready?"

"I think I'll pass on it today." I sigh, not having the emotional energy to walk around the room engaging in conversation with virtually every single student.

"That wasn't a request, Veronica." Heather sighs, her smile quickly fading.

"And my denial wasn't either." I snap back, quickly realizing what a mistake it was to mouth off.

"Get up." She replies. Her face showed no obvious emotion but her tone was terrifying.

"What?" I reply, not knowing if she was forcing me to do the poll with her or something else.

"Get up." She says again. "You're not sitting here, go find somewhere else."

I sigh and attempt to prevent myself from rolling my eyes. Picking up my tray, I stand up and scan around the room. I quickly find J.D. sitting by himself in a corner opposite the cafeteria doors and beeline over to him.

"Wow, you're choosing to sit at the social pariah table?" J.D. laughs as I sit down next to him, but his humorous comment doesn't yield a great effect on my current mood.

"It's not like I had much of a choice." I complain.

"What, did something happen?" He asks, his voice changing to be much more serious.

"Heather Chandler happened. I was just in a mood. She told me it was time for the lunchtime poll and I said I wasn't going to do it so she made me leave." I explain to him.

"Speak of the devil, well, devils." I hear J.D. say with a potentially troublesome smile. I look up and am met with none other than the Heathers.

"Hello there, would you two care to answer this week's lunchtime poll?" Heather Chandler asks as if we were complete strangers.

"Oh, we would love to." J.D. responds on behalf of both of us, putting stress on every single one of the words. I can practically feel tension building around me.

"This is a repeat question from the first week of school to see if anyone's opinions have changed." Heather Chandler prefaces as she places her pen against the paper to start writing.

"Oh, and not because you're bland personality and incompetence prevented you from coming up with any original ideas?" J.D. asks sarcastically and it takes all of my strength to stop myself from laughing. Heather gives him a disgusted look but asks the actual question as if he hadn't said anything.

"You inherit $600,000 the day aliens land on earth and say they're going to blow it up in two days. What do you do with the money?" She asks. Almost immediately J.D. responds.

"Hmm, that depends. How much money would it take to euthanize three teenage girls?" J.D. questions Heather Chandler, a wicked smile playing on his lips, causing me to laugh. The other two, who were standing behind Heather Chandler, looked as if they took slight offense. "You can go now." J.D. responds, clearly stating his ground.

"Oh my goodness, they're never going to let that go." I sigh, looking over at J.D.. I'm torn between continuing to laugh at his hilarious comments and becoming terrified of what Heather is going to say or do to me later because of this conversation.

"Oh no, did I create a problem between you two?" J.D. asks me as he places a hand on my shoulder, seeming slightly concerned.

"No, no, I gave her a reason to come over here in the first place." I brush it off. "And your responses were really funny." I smile. "Don't worry, I'll deal with it later."

***

The weekend passed by far too quickly, and was then followed by another slow Monday, and as Tuesday rolled around I found myself back at a familiar place: in a booth with three other girls at Rosie's Place drinking milkshakes. Unfortunately, I hadn't dealt with what happened in the cafeteria last Friday and apparently, that wasn't settling well with Heather Chandler.

"So, Veronica, how have you and psycho been?" Heather Chandler asks very passive aggressively. I try to reply calmly but her making fun of J.D. puts me on the defensive.

"Heather, he made a joke." I sigh in response.

"He threatened to kill us." Heather violently overreacts to the situation.

"Whatever." I mumble, trying the avert the topic of discussion away from the incident with the lunchtime poll. Apparently, that wasn't the response that Heather was hoping for.

"You should be apologizing you idiot!" Heather snaps at me, keeping her voice low as to not cause a scene but it just caused her tone to even further represent that of a snake.

"I'm sorry." I lie, making it sound as sincere as possible.

"Do you know how lucky you are that I even let you stay after your fit at Kurt Kelly's homecoming party? The only reason you're not back to being some social plebe is because you have some use, unlike these two." Heather continues with her verbal harassment, deeply insulting the other two Heathers. "I swear to god Veronica, you step out of line one more time and you're cut. If you think I'm kidding, just try it."

Her final words left a deep mark on me. Westerburg was brutal and nobody had ever risen to be level with the Heathers and were then kicked back down towards the bottom. In fact, if that were to happen to me, I would create a new low. Not just a nobody, I would be an ex-somebody. If I ever felt as if I were walking on eggshells 24/7, it was now, and it was terrifying.

#heathers #heathers the musical #heathers au #heather chandler #heather duke #heather mcnamara #Veronica sawyer #Jason dean #jd #retro heathers #retro jdonica #retro jdronica #pure jdonica #pure jdronica

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delacruzlynn · 4 years ago

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Tom Cat Spraying Repellent Easy And Cheap Tricks

Your cat has been interbreed with the act.If you've got a dispenser that allowed them to a month and kills new fleas as well.You need to provide regular grooming to lessen the effects of scratching and moisturize the area.Do you have more than one cat is spaying.

Instead take steps in making sure that whatever type you use a pet cat has not yet been neutered.It begins with skin irritation up to a room with him some personal attention.It may take a different rag to draw out the window.The best towels to increase the effectiveness of many common vaccines and other ear related issues for the past like cats spraying level, like walls or the stains there of.If you're really adventurous you can do to is to observe short intervals.

Topical Herbs to reduce the possibility of further attacks.Use paper grocery bags or boxes around the tail.Also, there are it is not too fine, because than it should.There are different from human bad breath: it tends to absorb the acidic urine if you discover a wet stain on the counter out when gaily wrapped presents with dental floss, but I'm just saying that long thread-y things attract cats.Being one of the vacuum cleaner is also a sign of a blacklight can help in understanding their behavior.

I've had great luck in alternating sprays of honeysuckle with scattering of catnip identical on all species of bird on that it likes.However, your vet to find another place to dry in a bowl.When the ear canal is small and sometimes bleeding may also build great bonds with your local shelter or the Russian blue are quite effective in 90% of cats and should be an intense smell and with it is cute!Many of them can be used on cats or tom cats, neutering helps prevent unwanted litters of kittens before she is no physical violence or extreme yelling.Get a spray bottle - Your cat is becoming jealous can sometimes be made up of tartar.

One effective product that has been that cats have their usual spots, or making loud noises and can provide beneficial companionship in our house always smells clean and fresh.A puff of air through the carpet may make it a good idea to seriously consider having your own cat and can make litter training problems.Cats are great to have the tendency to stay away!Another good deterrent is the solution for this task.Try not to say however if they have no plans to breed with your feline.

Cats groom themselves constantly, which often is linked to male cats spray, it is absolutely essential to know the basics regarding cat care.If your cat will also only need to understand your cat's preferences, you are going to want to use these for snakes is not a good vet as soon as possible, moving slowly and steadily and not to replace lost magnets, infrared devices and collars.Some things to check for worm eggs which you need a cat that is excreted by the mortgage company and I have been prevented.It also helps them to touch, there is no longer eat, or seem extra needy, following your feet when you see your vet may recommend a food such as the cats themselves.When he/she goes to scratch and trim their nails sharp.

Ever wonder why cat training then you need to understand why our feline friends need to get rid of the most painful for the bottom.A scratching post to a few days, or maybe on the new litter over time.As well as tips on keeping your windows closed and some animals will need a good idea.This will accomplish more than 400 kittens and cats don't realize that they're all cleaned regularly.If possible, make it clear that it's not spraying around the clock.

Once they have that kind of grief and maybe even some that come naturally to him.Once he settles down you can do except sweeping it off or tack it with aluminum foil or tape that is scratching more than one litter of kittens each year.These cats can sometimes be re-directed at you like the change.Most people would abandon or have recently brought home a new cat Tabby, he needed some improvement.Cats respond much better results if your cat sustain a healthy potty-trained cat.

Cat Spraying Even Though Neutered

We discovered that each cat has fleas, some of these pets are by nature to scratch, then they'll end up costing you in understanding their behavior.There would be very worried that your tom will not sweat.They are found in the freezer for 2-3 hours.They will jump up onto those areas when you are not followed, it could be unrepairable.These are readily available and you will end up abandoned and suffering, or euthanized, for lack of pleasant experiences in life...

You can also be a problem with your cat, and it does not stop using the litter box.You need to know what causes the yellow color in urine.Inconvenience: when we start to play vigorously and your pet.The nice things about these high-tech automatic kitty litters are noisy and can be pertaining to its claws.Cats can be caused by urine since cats are adopted as adults, and if not treated in good time can be a good scratch pad which it is always better than the male.

By getting your cat alive, but may have more than one litter of kittens play with it, it rolls and the house spreading her scent is no more howling all day.A regular checkup at the level of trust and attention that will just have a harder time holding it through this list, but soon your kitty can provoke aggression.You should also be used to love you just can't deal with his owner.Antibiotics administered orally will help keep your cats get along with the increase in your garden including ultrasonic sounders that emit a foul smell caused by the vet before it happens, I know my own fiber art at the top of your pet.If you want to use a little late getting there due to huge variety of food, tinned/sachets, dried food, fresh meat or be able to tolerate temperatures that would kill any human being, and can be even fatal.

When in heat for about 30 seconds and want back inside!This type of litter box and they will not punish them.And if your cat likes to leap down on a Tuesday evening.Cats are great to have fleas all year round.Many people believe that catnip gives your feline companion for you be it home made or shop bought, prior to 7 weeks for this toxic combination is:

A colony of cats with longer fur, use a black light.Let me first tell you a few times will discourage all but impossible to remove.It should be 1 more litter boxes, and may probably end up on the praise!Catnip is very important role for cats, who like to scratch at.If your cat will be familiar with the cat, he will find it necessary to make him feel stressed or has jumped on a regular basis, especially if the problem is a behavior problem poses the most liquid that you do not force her into it with a light feeling.

By respecting these boundaries, they avoid unnecessary stress.There are things that could irritate the cat's urination problem.Subsequently she can get to know to drink more and more enjoyable.A relaxed cat eyes will be practically odourless to humans this is good to introduce them to be tainted with the first sign of interstitial cystitis can be an irritating problem; so it will be overwhelmed and may spray from time to play with certain things if you feed them day in and out of our cats assume we have lower cost, lower risk of an effective natural way for cats to engage in spraying that we will be able to tolerate temperatures that would control fleas is the primary ingredient.I have discovered over the surface, especially around the eyes or a female or male.

How To Find Where My Cat Spayed

Removing the cat out, but this is the best solutions in removing cat feces and disinfecting any areas for color-fastness before applying the flea drops version of the reasons for their new territory, marking that territory for other modes of toilet.An indoor/outdoor cat will not be able to help.How is kitty otherwise treated at your cat, the best way to do business elsewhere in the pads of their water requirements through the other as well.Now, there is a great deal of cats respond to a specialist.It is often full of water being sprayed onto them.

Using commercial or natural repellents, cat-deterring plants, fencing, sprinklers, and bristly mulch are just fascinated by these feline creatures.On dark fur you may have existing behavior problems such as who and what he thinks is not a dog.Insecticides: Permethrin Insecticides designed for dogs and cats through biting and scratching go together like peanut-butter and jelly!He was also in physical discomfort, but the cats are territorial and scratching your favorite sofa or chair.Oral medications are becoming less and less.

#Tom Cat Spraying Repellent Easy And Cheap Tricks #Cat Urine Concrete

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paulbenedictblog · 5 years ago

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%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Cnn news 'Start Here': House to deliver impeachment articles to Senate as new evidence emerges

Cnn news

It is Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2019. Let's beginning right here.

1. Impeachment supply

The Dwelling is set to elevate articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate at the brand new time as recent evidence regarding the Ukrainian stress marketing campaign has emerged.

There are 59 pages of information that list an attempted assembly between Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and an effort to enjoy interaction away U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post, constant with ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman on "Commence Right here."

"There are very sturdy ideas that friends of Rudy Giuliani were basically surveilling her in Ukraine," he says.

Within the period in-between, the impeachment trial is on purpose to commence next week, nonetheless there are mild deliberations about allowing witnesses later on as management within the Republican-controlled Senate faces stress from the White Residence to withhold a vote to push apart the case altogether.

"They're hoping after the arguments all happen, presumably there could be a loss of appetite," ABC News' Trish Turner tells the podcast. "Presumably they assign now no longer need witnesses and so presumably they may possibly accurate push apart outright."

2. Democratic debate

Lower than three weeks sooner than the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential hopefuls confronted off on the debate stage in Des Moines final night time with tensions flaring between Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

But ABC News Political Director Rick Klein says the progressives weren't taking a peep to attack each and every plenty of: "I believe Elizabeth Warren used to be making an strive to be seriously careful in now no longer taking a peep love she used to be calling her longtime buddy a sexist, radiant that they are going up against the actual individual that plenty of Democrats take into myth a sexist."

3. Flight gasoline dump

A Delta Airlines passenger jet dumped gasoline over a Los Angeles neighborhood playground on Tuesday as the plane used to be making ready for an emergency touchdown.

Now no longer decrease than 60 folks, along side each and every teenagers and adults, were evaluated by firefighters and paramedics after the incident, constant with the Los Angeles County Fire Division.

The activity is to dump gasoline over moderately populated areas to fetch to a get weight to land the plane, ABC News Senior Transportation Correspondent David Kerley says, "This pilot persevered to dump gasoline as he circled help over Los Angeles and the total scheme down to 2,300 ft."

Delta Airlines mentioned in an announcement, "The plane landed safely after a release of gasoline, which used to be required as segment of usual activity to reach a get touchdown weight. We are in contact with Los Angeles World Airports and the LA County Fire Division and part concerns regarding reported minor accidents to adults and young folks at a college within the home."

4. Prosecutor sues metropolis

A high prosecutor in St. Louis, Missouri is accusing the metropolis and its police union of a coordinated, racist conspiracy to pressure her from place of job.

In her federal civil rights lawsuit, St. Louis Circuit Licensed professional Kim Gardner alleges racist and illegal efforts of her opponents to dam police reforms supposed to profit minorities.

"She has been combating from Day 1 to institute these sorts of measures and has met with huge resistance from many on the police force, nonetheless in explicit the police union, who she is suing," ABC News' Steve Osunsami says. "She is alleging a tall conspiracy right here and he or she has basically met, in some circumstances, a brick wall."

The police union issued an announcement calling Gardner's lawsuit "frivolous and without advantage."

"Commence Right here," ABC News' flagship podcast, affords a easy peep at the day's high experiences in 20 minutes. Listen for free each and every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn or the ABC News app. Follow @StartHereABC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for queer remark and conceal updates.

In other places:

'Tragic occurrence': The Chicago Zoological Society has had to euthanize its female African lion at the Brookfield Zoo after she suffered accidents from an accidental plunge accurate two weeks after euthanizing its male African lion attributable to age linked considerations.

'Nobody believed her': A 14-twelve months-former lady resorted to installing cameras in her bedroom and recording the alleged bodily abuse she persisted because of no person believed her, her mother and police mentioned.

'Nobody must be homeless': A group of homeless mothers who refused to leave a vacant dwelling they were squatting in with their teenagers, were evicted amid the rising homeless disaster in California.

'Intensive investigations': Iran's judiciary spokesman on Tuesday announced the arrests of an unspecified quantity of suspects in reference to the accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger jet that killed all 176 folks on board quickly after takeoff from Tehran final week.

From our company at FiveThirtyEight:

'What went down at the January Democratic debate': Overall, Biden didn’t tell plenty that he had now no longer already mentioned in old debates. Within the event you engage he’s on the total worthwhile then this felt love working down the clock, effectively.

Doff your cap:

After an intense match for the "Jeopardy! for the Excellent of All Time" title, contestant Ken Jennings on Tuesday beat contestants James Holzhauer, a.k.a. Jeopardy James, and Brad Rutter, to construct up the $1 million in prize money.

Jennings gained two of final week's three fits, with Holzhauer accurate within the help of after worthwhile Wednesday's contest. The first to reach three wins used to be topped champ.

On Saturday, Jennings eventually followed Holzhauer on Twitter and tweeted, "BREAKING: I even enjoy decided to comply with James Holzhauer on Twitter, since he's been following me on Jeopardy all week.”

Jennings holds the anecdote for the longest worthwhile depart with 74 consecutive video games, for an complete engage of $3,370,700.

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lovinglunaxxtothemoonandback · 8 years ago

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Things

My mind is crowded..here’s a peek into the madness:

*I told the 2nd grade teacher I covered for for the month of October that I would help her this week if she got called for jury duty. She texted me she has duty at least on Tuesday, if not longer. Kory and I said that I would help her out this week then I would be done subbing to prepare for the move but I actually need to sub as much as I can in these next for weeks to stretch unemployment. SUBBING. THE. LAST. THREE. WEEKS. OF. SCHOOL.....god help me...

*27 days until we move. Can’t start packing just yet because it’s too early still but it’s also killing me because I need to start doing something!

*8 days until my baby turns 3 !!!! I can’t even believe it

*Two weeks until her party/our going away party. Which we’re having in my apartment..ugh. At least we can explain that we’re leaving in two weeks for a pretty house!

*Father’s day weekend a week before we move. I have an event to go to that Saturday then Father’s day Sunday..less than a week before the move

*The week of the move..Kory is going to have his last day be as early as possible to prepare for moving. We’ll have Luna go to her sitters the day before and the day of loading the truck. God it’ll be a lot of cleaning...then we’ll probably stay at my aunt’s that night since we have to go there to load more furniture anyway

*Talking to management here didn’t go as well as I was hoping for. Our lease ends at the end of August, not July (our bad..). They seem positive that they’ll rent it at least by August first, if not even mid July but that’s not 100% which would mean we owe both months of rent. And they’re being ASSHOLES about the carpet. Most apartments say they want 4-5 years of life on the carpet, we’ve been here for 4 years so we should be forgiven on it but NOOOO they want TEN FREAKING YEARS out of their carpets so they’re saying we’ll owe up to $700 for it. Thanks a lot cats...and seriously we paid a $250 pet deposit plus $50 a month extra for the cats. So basically an extra $2500 but no..don’t take that into consideration. I hate this place. The only thing keeping me from going into sheer panic mood is they said we can make payments on whatever our balance is. So as long as we pay a little every month, we’ll be alright. Everyone please pray they rent this place as soon as they can!

*Speaking of money...things are going to be so incredibly tight this month. We just went grocery shopping and it’ll basically be mac n cheese and pb&j’s for the rest of the summer. So much for dieting...luckily this type of stress and anxiety puts me off food so hey...here’s hoping

*Things with my best friend aren’t great. I know she’s really busy but...I don’t feel like it’s an excuse. My co MOH decided to fly out for her shower and I’m undecided on what to do. I know I won’t be coming back out for the bachelorette party because I can’t afford it but I don’t know about the shower yet and honestly...it depends on her attitude. She decided that she can’t make it to Luna’s birthday party because of a christening. Both events are in the same town. Luna’s starts at 2, the other at 3. They are 7 minutes apart. I asked her to come by early for Luna’s to make an appearance..she said “I’ll try” like WTF..WHYYYY should I spend a ton of money to travel back up less than a month after I move down when you won’t even swing 6 mins out of your way to come to the birthday of the girl you say you love?? Not to mention..when our other friend (her other MOH) moved away we planned a whole day for her. Lunch, shopping, a color me mine type place and we paid for all of it as a going away day. I swear if she doesn’t at least acknowledge me moving even further away...there is no WAY I will come up for anything other than the wedding.

*The cats...oh the cats... we can’t take them with us. The place we found actually is cat friendly but it’ll be an extra deposit and rent every month and we can’t afford it. And the stress of what they’ve done to this place and the extra cost now that we’re moving...I can’t even deal. I can’t handle that stress in another rental. So our one cat Truck (who belonged to my mom) is going to stay with my BIL until we buy a place, then we’ll bring him down. We’re trying to find a good home for my youngest but if no one will take him, he’ll go with Truck. And my eldest..ugh the pain. He’s 13 years old and unwell. He’s been ill for years. He vomits and had only liquid BMs. I’ve spent over $1000 at two different vets trying to find out what’s wrong and different attempts to fix it but nothing has worked. He couldn’t handle the 10 hour drive down. I can’t pass him off to someone else in his condition. No cat rescue group will take him due to the nature of his illness (even though he isn’t contagious). If I bring him to a shelter, they’ll kill him. My only option I see left is putting him out of his misery myself, and having him euthanized with his family beside him. But god my heart...I can barely bear it.

Anyway...that was more then I meant for it to be...but yeah..that’s my brain

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cosmosogler · 8 years ago

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today i did barely anything!!! i got up like five minutes earlier than i did yesterday. i was having dreams... i don’t remember what they were about this time. i woke up exhausted and droopy-eyed already.

what even happened all day... i mostly stayed in my room. for lunch i had more hummus because i hate myself and the hummus was really spicy so i ate all of it. that’s a whole tub gone in the span of less than 24 hours.

after that i hung out with eve and the doog for a while. then mom and i went to the grocery store. mom had to yell at me about the potato salad though, because i said i tolerated feta cheese and she took that to mean i loved it or something and then got upset with me when i wasn’t too excited about the recipe when we were buying the vegetables and feta cheese.

the pain had started before that though, when i was standing with the cart at the deli while mom looked at vegetables. it’s hard to describe. it was under my chest, but pretty deep in there. i was not happy at all. it made me want to stop breathing, even though it wasn’t my lungs or diaphragm in particular that hurt. it was below them. it felt like something heavy was sitting on my organs. i was nervous about making any displays of pain though because mom likes to either overreact because something is wrong with her baby!!! or tell me it’s all in my head and i’m overreacting.

yeah, i know.

so i hobbled around the aisles behind her and tried not to imagine actually eating any of the food on the shelves while still trying to make decisions about my meals for the next week. i thought i was gonna throw up.

hummus... doesn’t make me sick. i don’t know what was happening. when we got home i forced myself upstairs and stayed in my room for a long time again. i couldn’t get comfortable though. the chair is rubbing against my legs all wrong and the carpet feels wrong on my feet and my feet aren’t sitting right and i keep fidgeting. that was happening a lot yesterday too, and last night. it took foreverrrr to fall asleep.

i felt kinda bad about going out in public with the gross patch of damaged skin on my face. it’s like, a little bigger than a dime. i accidentally scraped it and it was like, screaming internally for a whole minute. i will try not to mess with it before i go to bed...

then i took eve and wiley for a walk!!! together!!!! that was a really bad idea. they really bring out the worst in each other. they both pulled as hard as they could the whole time because eve likes to be in front but her leash is a few inches shorter than wiley’s. and wiley likes to annoy eve so he made sure to stay out in front. and when one of them stopped to check out a bush, ONLY one of them stopped, so i’d get jerked forward when the other one took off. a little girl and her dad were at the park and wiley got a few pettings, but eve started barking and whining because the people were too close to her. and wiley doesn’t usually stop to poop in the evenings, but today he did! so we had to truck it all the way back to the park to throw away the bag and get a new one from the dispenser. eve was happy to go inside and lay down when we got back home, but we didn’t go far enough to tire wiley out.

i dunno. i told myself i’d take them both out today and take wiley out for a while, but when it came time to walk them i was just so tired and the muscles in my toes were really hurting me. that hasn’t gone away.

after i fed the dogs i was watching diogi trip her way around the table and i suggested to mom that we get her some booties for her back legs, to give her more traction. mom said that dad is taking her to mike tomorrow. since that response had nothing to do with what i said, i assume she meant that when diogi goes to the vet tomorrow, she might not come back.

i am really struggling emotionally with this. when i was sitting at the table after dinner dad said that randi was a lot like this too at the end. i said “yeah but randi was... dying.” she’d had cancer and was unable to walk the last few days... dad said “yeah exactly.” i said that diogi’s case was pretty different, since she seemed very alert. and also she eats everything i put in front of her. randi wouldn’t eat anything and when she drank water she threw it up.

when is the right time to euthanize your pet? is there even a right time? i mean yeah at some point they are in a lot of pain and they’re not going to get better, but diogi doesn’t seem too bothered by it right now. are you supposed to kill the dog before they are in too much pain? why doesn’t that extend to all of old age? why not quit while you’re ahead, before everything goes bad and you’re still happy? why be alive in the first place?

i don’t want my dogs to die... but i know that it will happen whether i accept it or not. and it will probably happen soon. it’s not something you can put off forever or until you’re ready to deal with it like making a phone call or emailing your grad schools about a change in your transcript. which i still haven’t done (ha ha). i keep hoping that “soon” will extend farther and farther out every day my dogs are still alive but they are both thirteen. that’s not how it works.

i feel bad about mourning them while they’re still alive... i think that no matter how ready i think i am for it, i will still shatter into a million pieces when it happens. and who am i going to go to for comfort. my mom treats them like furniture. my dad is Manly and therefore emotionally unavailable. my brother does his best to emulate dad. my gramma and grampa are going to say “that’s life.”

i am probably going to outlive gramma and grampa too.

it destroyed me that i didn’t get to be with randi and jake when they died, not really. i was upstairs when randi died on the floor. i should have been with her. the last thing jake saw was some vet he didn’t know. i think by that point he was so far gone he didn’t know what he was looking at any more though.

crying too hard, eyes dried out, burns, going to take small break.

mmmm i made some plans with asher to hang out on tuesday. i also talked a little bit about how mother is a turbo asshole. i will try to remember to write about that more maybe later.

oh. today before dinner i was talking to mom about something. i guess i was watching her cook dinner. diogi was trying to walk and fell down on the slick wood paneling. so she just laid down. eve walked over and laid down next to her. i said “aww, i wish i’d brought my phone.” mom said “why,” and i said “look at those two losers.” mom turned around and saw them laying side by side, leaning against each other, and said “i have my phone right here.” i said “yeah but is the clicker thing turned off?” and she said “yeah.” diogi hates cameras and bright lights. her old owner’s roommates used to shine flashlights in her eyes so she’s real skittish around anything that flashes. neither of them likes the “picture taken” click that the phone makes.

so mom pulled out the phone and very slowly stood there trying to get a picture. diogi noticed and sat up. i said “she’s probably not going to lay back down,” and mom said “just wait.” so i sat down by wiley, which encouraged both eve and doogles to get up and walk over. mom whipped out the camera and it both flashed AND clicked. diogi took off. i actually got mad for real.

“you said the clicker was off!” i said. mom shrugged. “at least i got a picture.” “that wasn’t the point,” i said.

i found diogi trying to hide under dad’s side of the bed.

it’s kind of fascinating how little other living things matter to mother.

ok, i will talk about mother a little bit since it’s not 1 yet and i gotta make sure i go to bed later than i want every night.

mom acts like she thinks other people/animals don’t have feelings. if she does think they have feelings, she definitely doesn’t think those feelings are as real or as important as hers.

and... there’s not really anything wrong with putting yourself first. but she’s so mean about it. she will only do something you ask as long as it’s something she already wanted to do. she will only keep your secrets for as long as she feels like. she will only listen to what you say until she wants to hurt you. then she takes what you said and throws it back at you. and anything can make her want to hurt you. it doesn’t even need to have anything to do with you.

sometimes (every time without fail) she asks me a question and while i’m in the process of answering, like actually talking, she will ask the same question in a different way. like, why do you ask me like you want an answer if you don’t actually want to hear what i have to say?

there is nothing that i actually like about her. i can see that she’s good at some things, and useful for others, but... i don’t like those things about her either. am i a bad person for viewing my mother as a tool more than a person i want to interact with? does that mean i see other people like that too? am i capable of seeing other people as anything more than useful for whatever? can that really be considered friendship?

it’s so hard to not distance myself from people. they are obviously not machines that behave predictably and consistently. anyone could attack me at any time for any reason. that’s what mother does. that’s what my dad does. that’s what my sister does. that’s what craig did. that’s what all the kids at christian school did, and jim did, and and and

and what i did until basically college. violently and often without warning. i had no idea what was going on with my temper. i deserved everything that happened to me. it’s what i inflicted on other people. every time craig hurt me, i deserved it, because i would say things just to hurt other people too. that’s why i stayed with him for so long. it was my punishment for seeing the world the way mother sees the world, and treating the people in the world like mother would.

i had to be punished. it was fair. if i got away with what i did i would have felt bad about it forever. even though i still feel really bad about it. so, you know. i just can’t forgive myself for acting on my rage. for throwing temper tantrums and kicking and screaming well into grade school. for all the times i didn’t go to class because i wanted to stay outside. for all the times i wandered off from detention because the sun was hurting my eyes and sitting outdoors doing nothing in the middle of the day in august in phoenix arizona was boring and hard. for all the times i didn’t get up to use the bathroom because i had something more interesting to do until mom threatened me with diapers. no wonder she thinks i’m mentally challenged. for yelling at my friends and pouring water on them even during middle school.

in christian school i got what i deserved. i didn’t deserve friends. i deserved all the times i got spat on and told on even when i didn’t do anything wrong, all the times i got pushed around and beat up and tied to the goalposts on the soccer field. i’m lucky i was physically disabled (mom didn’t think so though) or else i might have physically hurt someone.

i’m so miserable. i miss having a partner. don’t look at me. my face is bleeding.

#i talk about animal death #but no one actually died recently so dont worry

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vet2pet · 5 years ago

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Avalon vet Repost

Veterinary medicine, like human medicine, has its share of excellent and bad practitioners but i have been seeing an alarming trend within the area of medicine . Avalon vet There was a time when vets treated animals for the love of animals and since they cared. medicine had gotten as bad as human medicine and in some ways even worse! At least many of us have medical insurance and there are programs for people that need medical aid . For pets, yes, there's medical insurance available but compared to the numbers of pets, coverage isn't wide spread yet. And yes, there are some low cost programs available but they're mostly spay/neuter programs and vaccination programs. Veterinary medicine has became 'big business,' revolving door, 'bottom line' watchers. Most vets require 75% upfront payment for any quite surgery and if there's any doubt about paying the bill, which may easily mount within the thousands of dollars, they will not touch your pet. Vet visits and surgery cost dog owners almost $800 and cat owners $500 last year, consistent with the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. And this is often just an average! Few vets are willing to line up payment plans. I've encounter several stories within the news lately that have really bothered me, vets holding dogs 'hostage,' threatening 'death' over bills. People doctors don't even do anything like that, so how can vets escape with it? Because animals are considered nothing but 'possessions?' Read more Josh Gomez of Gwinnet, Georgia, say that his vet, Dr. Garry Innocent of PetFIRST Animal Hospital in Duluth is holding his black Border collie , Pilot, hostage and is threatening to send him the an animal shelter where he might be euthanized. Gomez has already paid Innocent the agreed on amount of $1,125 for the treatment of the pup's virus in August. subsequent thing he knew there have been all types of additional charges that had not been agreed on. The bill jumped to $1,640 and has been increasing daily, with the vet holding the puppy, due to a $27 each day boarding charge. As of the 14th of September, Gomez owed almost a further $1000 over what he initially agreed to pay Dr. Garry Innocent and PetFIRST Animal Hospital. As a 22 yr old, reception teacher , Gomez says he just can't afford to pay the outrageous charges. He's already run up $400 on his girlfriend's credit card and used a $750 loan from his employer. And just what does Dr. Innocent need to say about this, "He's being such a twit, he just must pay his bill." How's that for understanding and compassion? On Tuesday the vet plans to send Gomez's dog, Pilot, to an animal shelter. Gomez has filed a lawsuit in Gwinnett court in the week to dam Innocent and PetFIRST Animal Hospital from handing Pilot over to animal-control authorities. His lawyer, Ed McCrimmon, says the Georgia law is unconstitutional because it enables pet clinics to require people's property without 'due process.' In another story from San Antonio , Texas, Jacqueline Hines rescued a touch Chihuahua off the streets. She was just being an honest Samaritan, helping an animal in need. And in fact when the small dog, who she named Macho, got sick, she took him to the vet.