Equations On The Bathroom Wall

Well, the mirror, actually, but it flows better that way. I'm getting used to living with someone, juggling each of our preferences and moods. If ever there comes a time when we're apart for more than a few days now, I'm sure I would miss the equations scribbled in the fog of the mirror after a shower, and even the clothes dropped right NEXT to the hamper. It's so nice to feel another presence around. It keeps me grounded, like a tether 'round my waist on a stormy ship.

I've been having a lot of dreams of pirates and ship voyages lately, so that's what my head is full of. I think it means I want travel, and freedom. Soon, I might be able to afford to do some travel and taste some freedom. I just have to wait, and be patient. Sleeping, eating, playing a video game or two or reading a book now and then, working, sleeping some more. It's a cycle I'm sliding into the routine of. I'm looking forward to beginning my regular shift at work and leaving training behind--I won't have to be at work until 5 p.m., and then I'll get off at 1:30 a.m. That suits my schedule better--gives me more of the day to fritter away, since I never really can sleep past 10 a.m. anymore.

I'm still disengaged, but my new job comes with fantastic benefits, and soon I'll be able to begin regularly seeing a shrink. I've got one in mind who works with therapies that have sometimes had success in treating DPD. Let's hope she can help.

And now--as was oft said in Monty Python, and oft quoted by me--for something completely different.

Eventually, I am going to have a bevy of pets, the number of which borders on the stupid. The list is long, and the eventual (currently entirely imagined) house that my chemist and I will share will have a veritable zoo in our home and yard. What can I say, I adore animals. Growing up, I would have gladly thrown my free time into caring for some, had we more than a lethargic toy poodle and a rotation of cats of varying domesticity. I've had a variety of pets through the years; my own dog (a beagle who ran away), two cats (at varying times--one ran off, the other my mother gave away while I was at school. Now THAT is an angry rant for another time), frogs every once in awhile (a whole line of amphibians named Kilroy the First, Kilroy Junior, Kilroy the 3rd, Kilroy the 4th, and Jabba the Toad respectively), two hamsters who each ran away (Oscar and Oz, the latter of whom bred with the field mice in the basement to create some weird hybrid I'm considering submitting a screenplay about to the SyFy channel, I kid you not), two turtles, a guinea pig (who has a sad tale that I'll tell when I'm up for crying my eyes out), a rabbit, and a variety of small woodland creatures and birds I tried to nurse back to health after encounters with the cats. I don't count our cows as pets save one, because you don't eat pets. The one I do count as a pet is another crying tale. We never had more than three or four types of pets at once, so that should give you an idea of the turnover. A lot of missing creatures, cold-blooded animals returned to nature, and a few deaths. And I loved every animal desperately, caring for them (and often spoiling them into lazy obesity). I want to pass on to any children I may raise that same sweet and all-too-fleeting love. Though I know it inevitably ends in one of the sincerest forms of heartbreak, it is part of having a pet. You love them, you brighten each others life for awhile, and then you bid them a bittersweet farewell. In that sweet, bright middle of your time together, you each make life for the other more warm. More full. More enriched with love.

It is one of the purest relationships one can have, to have a pet--and one of the most worthwhile responsibilities I have ever known. People who abuse that relationship, to me, are despicable. But then, I'm not a big fan of anything pure being spoiled by the lumbering bullies of the world. Some people just will never understand the magnitude of what they destroy with a kind of blind abandon sometimes. It's a shame.