tallymark

Lots of things happening all at one time everything is crazy/busy/awful/good/bad/change.

Short version:

-Previous landlord took about $600 in damages from the security deposit for damages that were existing at the time we moved in (eg, no screen, nail holes in wall). Am going to contest, but don't know how to prove anything.

-Ex-roomate is the one who has the check, and has told me she'll send my half, but the numbers she told me were slightly fudged. Surprise surprise. In the end it only adds up to $50, but it's fifty coming out of my damn half of the deposit. My return email told her so, but there is little I can do to stop her if she sends the check shortchanging me anyway, since its too small for small claims court. So much for the whole song and dance about how could I have mistrusted her...I really, really don't get people.

-The breeder of the tabby girl had of course to make one last ditch effort to change my mind. And you know, I'm relaxed enough now, since I know I have another girl coming, that I might have agreed if she'd offered me the right cat. But she offered me a boy kitten who has a hernia and an undropped testicle, at a reduced price so that the operation on the hernia wouldn't cost me any extra money...except, I looked up some prices on the internet, and the amount she took off doesn't add up to what it would actually cost. Yeah. The latter condition is actually the more worrisome to me, since it can take ultrasounds and exploratory surgeries to find it, and if they don't, not only will he spray like an intact male (the new landlord will just love that), but sometimes the lost testicle goes cancerous (this killed a kitten of my sister's, years ago). I feel kind of bad, in that this woman is desperate to have a tabby, and I don't really care about the coloration of the kitten...but she wasn't offering a healthy kitten in trade. It's strange, though, in that I think, in her eyes, I'm screwing her, because the kitten means more to her...I can't help but wonder if I am, since I *do* already have another cat on the way. Who really deserves the kitten? Who is the one inadvertently screwing the other? I'm not sure I really know anymore.

-Am moving into the apartment this weekend. Am looking forward to ending the commute but have never managed to overcome the angst of leaving home, even though I've done it many times. Part of me just wants to stay at home with my mom forever. Part of me will never grow that way, but part of me will always be happier that way. I wish there was a way to have both.

-Did I mention that, barring last-minute changes, we're picking up both cats tomorrow? We set separate dates, but the first breeder had to change last-minute and can only do friday. We'd kinda planned to introduce them to the other cats separately and slowly. Now it will be all at once, unless we shut them in isolated rooms, which may be more traumatic for them but less for my other cats. Except, good luck keeping my cats out of any closed room. Am excited because, yay, kittens...but two at once is a bit overwhelming.
 
-I still miss my Emma.

Oops. That didn't really end up so short, did it? And that's just this week.
 

Sorry for the cliffhangery moment! Haven't had a chance to post all week and have passed out early every day. ^_^;;

Okay, so to make a long story short: After a few days, I was still disappointed but had accepted the loss of the tabby kitten. My mom though, uber-mom that she is, had set out right away to find a new breeder, and on Monday morning she took me to see one with available kittens. I was still set when I went on finding a baby, but when I got there...the breeder introduced me to a slightly older girl. A lovely tortie smoke persian named Parti Favor (yes, that's her real name. I'll be changing it XD). She's 13 months old, so not a baby but still something of a kitten (around Sofie's age), and was bottle-raised...her mother hadn't been able to nurse her. The result is she's very affectionate and super-starved for human attention...which is hard to get in a house of about twenty or so cats. The breeder had wanted to keep her for show, but she ended up not having the personality for it, so she wants to rehome her somewhere that she can get the special attention she deserves. I liked her lots, and she seemed to like me, and the breeder made the point that it would be hard to leave a very young kitten alone in a studio all day, but someone Parti Favor's age can take care of themselves. She's also at the age where she can really bond with a person...which is what I really want.

So I decided to go for it. And I wrote a check and went off to work and that was cat #1.

Then at the end of the day I went home and found that the first breeder had called up in tears, saying they felt horrible for what they had done and wanted to do the right thing, and they would give me the tabby girl if I still wanted her. To which I went (without entirely processing just how much money in cats I was spending in one day) "Okay!! ^___^"

Yes, cat #2 is in fact the original kitten I was waiting for all along! Life works in mysterious ways. I'm still ending up with the same cat, but thanks to the entire fiasco I'm getting a second one I had never planned on...but perhaps it's just one of life's unexpected blessings. I'm happy with how things turned out. I'll get to enjoy that wonderful baby-stage, but still have a cat who's ready to bond. And with Parti there I won't have to worry about leaving the tabby by herself (Parti is a very good auntie).

Some of the backstory came out, too, and things make more sense. Just before she called me about keeping the cat, she had a litter of six kittens die in birth...it was going to be a litter of tabbies. The sire of the lot, Tarzan (big brown tabby) was suddenly sick too, and I guess the emotional impact was too much and she panicked and fixated on the last tabby she had (mine). She also indirectly confesssed to being bipolar, so...yeah. It's possible that she'll have another change of heart, but I don't think she will. (If only because she needs the money from the sale for vet bills...). I'm glad now though that I was nice (I was writing angry emails in my head for awhile there, but all my real emails were polite).

And it seems like being nice has...paid off? Wow. I don't know what to make of that. ^_^;

Errr. Um.

I, ah...I somehow seem to have, in a single day, acquired two new kittens. Ehehe. ^_^;;

There's no kitten coming any more. Not this weekend, not any weekend. The breeder decided she wants the tabby for her breeding program and is keeping it for herself. Two days after she tells me it's ready for pick up, and two days before the set date of said pick up, and two months of waiting for my baby to be ready, and now she decides she's too valuable to sell. When she stated in her purchase agreement that "We reserve right to refuse sale to anyone at any time for any reason," she apparently really, really meant it. It really didn't occur to me that someone could use that clause for selfish reasons, or rather it didn't occur to me that someone would. So, the tabby girl is gone.

My mom reamed her out on the phone, and I was really too shocked and upset to do much more than cry and ask how on earth she could do this, but she was entirely unmoved. "You must understand," she tells me, "I need this kitten for my tabby line. Without her I have no tabbies." To which I responded, "Well, neither do I!" She went on to say how she had no choice, which is absolute bullshit, and I told her no, she did have a choice, and she was choosing to not honor our agreement. Just because she's allowed to renege doesn't mean it's not a shitty thing to do.

I know I shouldn't be this sad over a kitten I've never met, but I picked her out the day she was born and have been waiting for her ever since. I was naming her. I was buying her toys, and finding a place for us to live, and thinking of her.

I don't know what to do now. She's offered me my money back or the choice of another available kitten.  I don't really want this lady to have any of my money now, but I also don't want to wait months and months again for a kitten--finding another breeder, waiting for a kitten to be born, waiting for the kitten to mature...and I know her kittens are always good, even if she, apparently, is not. But all the two-month-olds she has right now are male, and I...I'd really wanted a baby girl. She has one female, but she's five months old already, and I know that's still a kitten but I'd wanted a baby girl...someone to love me from the very beginning, from as close to Day 1 as I could get. It's why I went through the whole process of picking a newborn and waiting.

There's other people waiting to buy, so I have to decide today if I want one of the others. How can I decide so fast? There's a red boy who is incredibly cute, looks a lot like my boy Mo, and I love Mo dearly. But I'd had my heart set for so long on a baby girl, since I lost my baby girl Emma, and will be losing my baby girl Sofie (with the heart condition). But it's not like choosing a boy would be bad...I'm sure I'd love them. And I've waited so long for a kitten, and in a few weeks I'll be moving into that apartment, and it'll be terrifying to do it alone without someone there to love me and keep me company. But...I don't know. I just don't know. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Oh hey there appears to be some sort of animal in my ceiling/attic. Well crap.

Haven't a clue what it is from the generic scurrying noises and occasinal scraping, but it's chosen to pass back and forth over my bed about forty billion times now.

EVERYONE,

The kitten has at last switched to solid(ish) foods and is ready for pick up THIS Saturday. YAY!

(Eeeeeee!)

I finally found an apartment I'm pleased with! Have already signed the lease and turned in my check for it; a nice little studio tucked behind the fens. The realtor I found was super awesome and helped me work down the price so I'm not entirely bankrupting myself: it's $1,095 a month, which is way more than I wanted to pay but way cheaper than everyone else (I'm serious. Boston is that bad.), no fee and no security deposit, heat and hot water included, pet friendly, and since my move-in-date isn't till Oct 1st they managed to get me the elusive 11 month lease...which saves me money at the end. Things will be tighter this year but I'll manage somehow. I could have maybe kept looking for roommates and gotten a place cheaper, but...I just didn't want to any more. I'm tired of living with strangers and all the anxiety that comes with it. Outside I can deal with people, but when I go home I want a sanctuary, something that's mine.

I confess though, the selling point was probably the bay windows, with a fourth story view right overlooking the fens (the fens are a strip of land that's part park and part wetlands, right in the middle of the city; part of the Emerald necklace). I like the idea of looking out my window and having sunlight and a lovely view to greet me (as opposed to: a wall. Or, drunk people.).

It's not big but considering I could've paid just as much money and gotten a 10X10 room in a basement, I'll consider it a win and be content.

In other news, estimated date of arrival for the kitten (Abigail/Annabell/Bella?) is around September 24th. She's already over 8 weeks old, but she's undersized and still nursing so the breeder wanted to hang on to her a little longer...persians often develop slower than other breeds so this is normal.

It's been another exhausting week. The drama with the ex-roommate is over, and the good news is I think I'm going to get my money back. The bad news is I'm left feeling kind of disappointed in myself. It...I don't know. It feels surreal, like it didn't really happen. If there was a fight, I think I lost.

( In which I suck very badly. )

Anyway. In other news, it appears that getting a studio in Boston is actually going to cost me a minimum of $1,100-$1,200 a month, not $900. Prices went up. Yay.

 Well, friendship is over and that's that. She sent me a lengthy email about her outrage and offense that I would accuse her of this, and she hadn't known her memo would invalidate the check, and she'd switched bank accounts a week before and planned to tell me this weekend...all the while detailing what a wonderful friend she is and all the things she graciously did for me as a friend. Perhaps she really did mean to send me the money, and perhaps it was all a big misunderstanding, but I don't care at this point. Her attitude in her emails clearly tells me that she doesn't think she did anything wrong, at any point...not the moving out without paying the rent, not the subletters...any of it.

In fact, when I responded saying that no, she had not been a good friend this summer, and explaining how her actions would lead anyone to question her motives, she responded telling me how hard she had worked to find subletters to pay the rent, and stated:

"I did it for you, Amanda, I went through the worst month in my life FOR YOU, so don't go telling me that I'm a horrible friend for finding you 2 people to pay the rent when you weren't going to pay the whole thing by yourself."

I don't know if I'm going to bother to respond again. No, Sasha, you did not do it for me, you did it for YOU. Don't act like you did me some grand favor by paying your share of the rent. That's not being a friend, that's you fulfilling your damn half of the lease. Of course I was not going to pay the whole thing by myself. Half the rent was your responsibility, and you found subletters in order to acquire the money. That's being a good tennant. Not letting me meet the subletters or bothering to find out what sex they are--sticking a female roommate with a strange man in the apartment that I didn't agree to? That's not being a good friend.  

It makes me angry how she makes this out like I'm a bad friend, money-grubbing and mistrustful, and like she's the generous goodhearted friend who was thinking of me all along. I think she even genuinely believes it. But what person wouldn't be suspicious after all she's done?

I did the right thing, didn't I? The bank told  me starting a paper trail was the only way to protect myself legally. Everyone has told me I would have been stupid not to do it. But was it the right thing?

I am so angry I'm shaking right now. The ex-roomate, the one I had to front all kinds of rent money for or be evicted? Well. Back when I had to make that $1,800 money order, I told her she needed to write me a check immediately for that amount. She told me she did not have it, but had the $1,600, and would write me a separate $200 check dated in August that I would hold on to. I had no choice to agree, since either way, I had to pay the landlord or be evicted.

What I did not realize, when I attempted to cash it at the bank today, was that the little memo she left at the bottom, "don't deposit until further notice" makes the check COMPLETELY INVALID. "Further notice" is a time that the bank can never verify, therefore, the check can never be cashed.

SECONDLY, the account the check was written on has been closed. Oh yes, you heard me right. It is clear to me that she never had any intent at all to return my $200, which means I can safely assume that she also intends to keep my $800 security deposit. My fucking god, she has a thousand dollars of my money and she's never going to give it back. I know I can take her to small claims and I'll win, but, that sort of thing doesn't seem to get actually enforced...the judge will rule she owes me money, but nothing will make her actually deliver it.

Am going to send an email tonight detailing what she owes me and asking for a date by which I will recieve it...starting a paper trail and whatnot...but jeezus. I am never going to get my money back. I'll sue her, because I'll never respect myself again if I don't, but knowing her, that money is gone.

Going out for awhile. Want to scream.

This has not been my week.

Today, I went to view the most glorious apartment (not the one in the last post, that one was bad), which I loved instantly (it had a private balcony! Balcony!), but by the time I got home the owners had emailed me saying they liked me lots, but someone else who'd visited first had decided to take it, and they had already offered it to them. No balcony for Tally. At this rate I'm going to be stuck with a studio, which around here are generally the size of a walk-in-closet, and cost $900 a month and up (like a very expensive dungeon). Which means no money for Tally either.

I called the landlord the other day to ask if they could send two separate checks when the security deposit gets returned, and the answer was no. One check gets sent, and it goes to the first person on the lease...that being my flaky ex-roomate. You know, the one who almost got me evicted for not paying the rent. Forgive me for being paranoid, but I'm not confident she's going to choose to return my money to me. Lawsuit for Tally?

Then yesterday I opened up my second thermos, which was empty but I had apparently forgotten to wash (it was closed, I couldn't see it was dirty), and the coffee dregs left in it were...moving...Yes, my coffee cup was filled with maggots. Oh joy.

Also, I'm learning that I was right about Boston and it's attitude towards weight. Boston is filled with skinny girls. Skinny, beautiful girls. There's hardly a pound to spare in this city. And now that I've gone through all this mysterious weight loss and look, according to everyone who knew me before, like I'm anoerexic, I've been hit on four times in the past week. I have never been hit on in my life. Ever. (At least not by someone who wasn't old and stalkerish..). But I wasn't fat, before. I was normal, maybe even on the thin side of normal. But now that my ribs are showing, I am apparently, at long last, finally pretty. Oh, humanity, you disappoint me so. (Note: I don't have a scale here so it's hard to tell, but I think I'm managing to hold my current weight and not lose more. The doctor didn't find anything wrong so for now I'll just chalk it up to my metabolism being "quirky").

Oh, and last week one of my guinea fowl horribly killed itself.

Sigh. Despite my impending dire poverty, I feel the urge to buy something really outrageous and fun for myself. Like a GPS. Or a lavishly expensive vibrator. Or an inflatable kayak (thanks to merimask for the idea!). I know I shouldn't, but...well, hell. Sometimes I feel like I deserve outrageous and fun things.

Going to view an apartment today...wish me luck...

 

( Tabby Time ).

 

Dear large group of people drinking and talking outside my window:

Shut up.

( i need luvs )

Since a few of you asked:

( This is what a defective goose looks like. )

 

Saw a yellow-shafted northern flicker in the fens today! That's a lifer! What's awesome is even before I went for the guidebook to ID it, I took one look at those feet and said to myself "Woodpecker." He was foraging on the ground but I guess I still recognize the classic woodpecker look--Ornithology actually taught me something! He was a funny little fellow. I think he knew I was watching.

Also, I managed to rediscover one of the herons (I'd worried they'd moved on, I haven't spotted them in weeks) and a defective goose.

I can't make them! :(

The kittens have all been born and now I'm torn over who to get. I said yes to the brown tabby girl born a few days ago (daughter of Tarzan, who is also a brown tabby. She'll probably come out looking either just like him or like Cinderella, who's a brown tabby girl born of the same parents as the new kitten, Reeses and Tarzan). But as soon as I did I started second guessing myself, thinking, maybe I should have gone for a boy, or a himalayan--someone absolutely nothing like Emma. Then today the breeder decided to offer up this Tortie point himalayan female (on the lower right of the page) that she'd been thinking of keeping, and asked if I wanted her instead. But now, I'm thinking, this cat will look *nothing* like Emma at all, and maybe it would be comforting to have a few familiar features. Plus, I'd feel awful turning down the tabby. I haven't seen her (there won't be pictures till she opens her eyes) but I accepted her, so it's like she's mine, and I never give cats away. And really, Emma was a calico, this is a tabby--they'll both have orange eyes and a lot of brown, but the similarity ends there.

The real problem I think is I feel horrible guilt about getting this kitten even though I want it, because this kitten is going to live with me, forever, just like Emma always wanted to, and deserved to, and never got. They are getting what should have been Emma's, and I feel like I must choose the right cat to recieve this gift (if living with me can be called a gift, lol). But how can I know who is right based on a picture? But I have to choose now, the kittens'll all be sold soon.

Speaking of living with me, I also haven't decided where I'm going to live next year. Part of me wants to have my own space and try living on my own again, get a nice little studio...the problem is even the littlest studio is nearly a thousand dollars a month. And, well, I have this thing where when I'm alone too much I go kind of crazy and start having panic attacks. But this time, with a kitten, maybe that won't happen. On the other hand, I could get some roommates, share my living space, and save a few hundred dollars a month. But do I want roommates? Having roommates can be great but it can also be awful, and even when it isn't, the idea of having my own solitary sanctuary is just...appealing right now.

I think at the moment I am leaning towards the tabby because maybe she'll be wonderful and I'd hate to "abandon" her, plus, tabbies are darned cute (I bet when pictures of her do go up, I'd be kicking myself for letting her go). I'd maybe like a studio but I don't want to be bankrupt and I don't want to go insane.

There are rats in my building! >:O

I forgot to mention I might be getting kicked out of grad school soon. The department finally realized I never turned in my thesis proposal (which I wrote, and gave to my advisor months ago, but he never reviewed it and now somebody else has published the same thing, so it needs to be redone entirely) and has given me a month to get it to them or they're dropping me. I told my advisor this a week ago and haven't gotten him to help me yet. If I can't get him to help me in the next week or so...well, that will be it, I suppose. He said he would, but, well...he also said he'd review my first proposal.

Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy, and incredibly overworked. But, I get the vibe these days that he's not pleased with me, on account of I'm probably the stupidest student to pass through his lab. I swear I get stupider every day. I cannot help but wonder if perhaps this is his chance to cut me loose...all he has to do is let it slide. He's done it before--you hear about these things, from other students, people who've been here longer. I wouldn't blame him, honestly. Maybe he sees it as the kind thing to do.

I can't find the energy to care. I hate it here and I was never cut out for grad school, it was a huge mistake all along. The only problem is if I get booted now, no school will ever take me again. So much for vet school I suppose. I was almost looking forward to it. But maybe that was another one of my stupid ideas that never would have flown. It's just sad that it never even got a chance to get off the ground.

The only thing to do now is push as much as I can to get it done, try to convince my advisor I'm worth salvaging, and hope for the best. My only other last-minute option, if it's coming down to the end and it looks like I won't be able to pull it off, is to withdraw on my own. Supposedly withdrawing looks better on your record than being tossed. If I withdraw, maybe I can start from the bottom and work my way up again...do some volunteering, be a secretary at a vet clinic...edge my way into the system.

Or I can move back in with my mom and sell dragons.