Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

DR. REZEYA'S SUPER FUN SCIENCE QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Hey kids! Have you ever wondered how many consecutive times Dr. Rezy would need to call Joe Manchin's office and leave a recording of Kate Nash's "Dickhead" in order to be arrested? Let's find out! :D

(I'm not actually doing this. I'm just stopping at one.)

I was joking yesterdaybefore (time is a little loose right now) that I was gonna take the Artie rescue time off as sick days, because it's technically "Family Emergency Health Leave."

Well.

My boss had a friendly question about a project and I mentioned the Artie situation and asked to cash in some personal time while I had his attention.

He said this is clearly a family emergency. I should take it as family health leave if I need it.

FUCK I lucked out. I am increasingly nearing "would take a bullet for my boss." He is the opposite of the opposite of Kim Kitsuragi.

=== SHORT VERSION ===

Stressed but not frantic. Artie is HERE AND SAFE, that's the most important thing.

And I'm... okayish. I just asked my boss if I can take the week off, since I've got the time piled up. I can figure out Artie stuff, talk to the landlord about pet leases, work on That Parallax Opportunity, maybe clean the house up and regather a little sanity.

I'm okayish. I will probably be leaning on y'all for more support and advice soon. But Artie is safe. That's so important and good. (She is also an idiot who learned NOTHING for three days stranded. That is frustrating and bad.)

=== LONG VERSION ===

And if we do have to let her out and she does it all again, FOR NOW the solution seems repeatable.

For now we're probably gonna try keeping her in for as long as she/we can stand it. I'm kinda looking forward to it, honestly? She's a good kitty and has mostly been taking it well. Main lingering fear is landlord stuff since we aren't supposed to have pets on the premises. (Heh.)

But yeah. I'm okay. I'm mostly okay. Watching my funds drain kinda fast while we're in Just Get Through The Day mode. We'll be fine. Lots of good news on Peg's career front.

So here's what else I'm still ruminating about:

The door in the abandoned apartment gets weaker and weaker each time and might not be reclosable next time. We are pondering installing our own latch and key-- it's not like the rightful owners couldn't get in through the front if needed. And fuck 'em at this point tbh. Failing that... I dunno, a lot of good thick adhesive tape to keep it shut between break-ins?

I'm also not thrilled about asking the rental company for a pet lease, because there is a mention in their online docs about "pet rent" and... it's not like we need an increase in cost of living right now. It's definitely never gonna be a solution for all the cats-- they want the pets DOCUMENTED and VACCINATED and there's no way they'd let us have five in there without charging us a fortune at best.

The "bright" spot: I looked at the lease and unless it's a explicitly an eviction-level offense like non-payment or, like, meth lab, the process for violations is possible fine + a "written notice" that we have five days to comply with. We can only be booted on the SECOND offense and it looks like that might even be legally binding on them? So I'm taking that as "you have one freebie." :p

And we've gone, what, 2 yrs and 8 mos now and nobody's hassled us about the cats? The worst we've ever gotten is "Yeah, could you try not to leave so much extra food out? It's summer and there are flies. Thanks!" I like to hope that if we explained the situation to them and made sad enough eyes at them they'd cut us a break and help us work out a solution... Of all the tenant offenses to commit, I think "Broke lease because worried about cute kitties" is one of the more charismatic.

Rezeya Montecore-St-Hobbes, Empress* of Mars offers the humblest available apologies to Shadow, Empress of 500-600 [REDACTED], Mid-City for mistakenly slandering her family for the, quote, "stinky stinky cat poot." Her Majesty* was unaware that she had left her weed vaporizer on.

We once again welcome the errant Princess Artemus back to our shared Terran domain and repledge our eternal devotion to our alliance.

You are kinda stinky though.

Dictated but not read,

​*

We hadn't really let the emotional impact of this hit because of Artie, but now that she's OK...

Yeah. We have news about Parallax that is good enough that we can't go into detail about it. It may or may not pan out, but we may have accomplished a major step towards actually getting this project recognized, here.

ARTIE UPDATE:

In case you missed the previous one... we are in CONDITION YAY. ^_______^

Artie is rescued. She is chilling out with us and we're thinking she's gonna spend the next couple days as an indoor cat. She seems (highly) energetic and healthy if understandably twitchy.

ARTIE UPDATE:

KITTY RESCUE VERY YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She's currently in our apartment having a monster poop. :)

also THANK YOU ALL for all the advice, concern, and help. we're so close and my hopes are at the highest they've been so far. we're taking a break-- we've been up since 7 am-- but might make another attempt tonight.

ARTIE UPDATE:

We haven't rescued her yet, but we made face-to-face contact, even got her close enough for a scritch and a treat from Peg's fingers. She has food and water we have confirmed she has access to. Not remotely resolved yet, the hole we found in the attic is too small and she's SUPER skittish about leaping down (understandably, she's gotta do it from a rafter), but...

WE KNOW SHE IS ALIVE, FED, AND HYDRATED NOW. Tools and Attempt #2 tomorrow morning. May seek carpentry advice soon.

Cat still stuck in neighbor's attic. Fire department was of no help though they did put forth a reasonable effort. See https://twitter.com/zebratron2084 for further information.

This is an all hands on deck situation. Please boost. If you know ANYONE in New Orleans area who might help, please let us know. If you have ANY practical advice (beyond "get a ladder," see twitter, it's too high & not safe) let us know.

Current Plan A: build a ramp out of lumber. Needs to be >20-30'. Advice VERY welcome.

Finally reconnected with my therapist. Big breakthroughs today... including finally getting up the nerve to discuss the accusations of abusiveness I got when Transliminal broke up.

We talked a LOT about what was really behind all that, how I long ago accepted my behavior was way unstable and my temper could be very scary to someone with Her background, but there was never ANY desire to control or manipulate behind any of the outbursts. It was all pure fear and self-hatred.

And she agreed. She said it just didn't sound like the usual warning signs at all-- and reassured me that Massive Temper Blowouts due to sheer sensory and emotional overload are really common among people with ADHD.

And I'd been TRYING to internalize that for years and move on, I suspected it's true, but... I guess I never felt morally qualified to be the one to turn off the alarm sensor. And FINALLY I can have a little peace there.

I wish you well, Orrery. I wish your whole family well. I don't think this was any more your fault than it was mine, and I DEFINITELY think a good chunk of it was my fault. I never wanted any of it, and to the last day, I cared so fucking much about you.

I hope we never see each other again, for both our sakes. I don't think the glitches that led us to fight can be fixed, only routed around. And Peggy has proven to be that route and I feel so much safer and more comfortable stuck otherwise-alone down here than I ever did "surrounded by friends" (true tho some of them proved to be <3 <3 ) in Seattle.

have i mentioned lately that shemp is an absolute legend?

he didn't particularly do anything, just came in this morning and Shemped at us for a bit and then politely went outside when it was time for us to go out to the cafe

but dammit if that's not enough what more could you possibly want from him? hero in my book. *nod*

or you know i could just come up and beat jason rantz with a tire iron for you

it's not like i'd be there long enough for them to put together an investigation

I've probably been driving Peg crazy with my high anxiety levels lately, and while she's been EXTREMELY gracious about it for the most part, my self-esteem is in the shitter today and I'm just feeling super, super awkward.

Part of the issue is that I had a whole bunch of minor worries about the cats straight in a row, and I CAN. NOT. TURN. THE. ANXIETY. OFF. where their well-being is involved. I just CAN'T err on the side of calm with them. I am starting to really understand why parents can seem to go completely batshit crazy over child safety issues.

The other day it was hearing what sounded like a wounded animal noise. It didn't even sound catlike, and everybody was accounted for but Shemp-- who I don't think could make that high-pitched of a sound if he tried. But I still found a part of myself nervously keeping a vigil for him all day, even though, as I put it to Peg, "I'd bet a million dollars on Shemp, here." I KNEW he was fine. Didn't matter.

Anyhow, I'd been fretting over Ceejay pretty badly because he has this very prominent FLAP on his belly. And he's had to be treated for parasites in the past, so... yeah. I was getting worried he was in the advanced stage of something.

And then I noticed Artie and Shemp both have kind of a LUMPY FLOPPY BIT on their bellies in the same location. And I was like OH SHIT does the whole family have something nasty?

And then by pure coincidence I ran across a Youtube video about a little thing called the "primordial pouch." Cats apparently have kinda their own little camel hump under their bellies, to store fats and give their innards a little extra combat armor. In part maybe to give @anthracite a little reassurance I'm working on the crazy. <3

Why didn't anybody tell me this? I really need to RTFM one of these days. Anyhow, I just feel a lot better now and wanted to chronicle my little mh journey. :>