1.7.07

From the molten-golden notes/And all in tune

Today my best friend from high school got married. I wanted to go to the wedding like nothing else, but life conspired against me. But Steve, since you told me you read this thing (much to my surprise, to be honest), I wish you the very best happiness. Send me pictures!

Instead of going to the wedding, I got to baby sit. Kind of. It's convoluted. A friend of my mother's has a daughter who's approximately my age who just had a child. Apparently the father's an absolute cretin and disappeared during the pregnancy, but he's wandering 'round now, hoping to get money. (Like I said, cretin.) But her mother doesn't want her to be alone at any point, so my mom volunteered to spend the day with her. This is where things get a bit sticky.
First, while I'm not a fan of cretins, she chose to sleep with him, and therefore (in my opinion) should have to deal with the outcome, all of it. But apparently my opinion is by far the least popular, for all and sundry have rallied round to support her in the ousting of the jackass.
What, you may ask, has any of this to do with me? Plenty, I would reply, because the night before the day in question, my mom fell ill and announced to me as I was about to retire that I would be going in her stead, and that I was not permitted to argue.
Needless to say, I was not pleased, especially since I was expected to be there by 8 am? Which meant rising by 7:15? I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm not a baby person either. As in, I can't stand them.

So there I was at 8 am, in a nearly-empty house, expected to be caretaker of a new mother and her small child. Fortunately, I didn't have to. She kept to one part of the house, I kept to another, and all was mostly well.
I had planned on a nap, because 5 hours of sleep isn't enough. But the child in question screamed for all but maybe 45 minutes of my time there. And as anyone who has heard a screaming newborn knows, it's damn near impossible to sleep.
So I read. The house was full of good books (Mrs. Pollifax and Lord of the Flies), so I settled down to some reading. Or I tried to, because a cat decided to walk up and claw at me.
I don't mind cats, as long as they leave me alone. This one, sadly, didn't. I thought seriously about kicking it, but decided against it--after all, I was barefoot and didn't want my foot mangled. So I poured water on it instead. It ran off yowling, and left me alone.
For the most part, anyway. I'm rather allergic to kitty litter (it makes my eyes swell shut), and even if the litter is kept far away, it does get tracked around by cat feet. This was several days ago, and my eyes are still burning.

But it wasn't all bad. Again, I got lots of reading done. Oh! I got a nifty hat in World of Warcraft, that makes me look like I'm surrounded by shadowy clouds that occasionally shoot forks of lightning, which is really cool.

Speaking of WoW, one last anecdote to close out the post. Awhile ago I ran an instance with a group of people I didn't know terribly well, and some people I didn't know at all. Normally that doesn't cause any problems, but...
A 17-year-old dropout decided that I was his "type." He told me all about his hobbies (smoking pot and huffing paint), and said that we should date. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf, sort of, and be nicer to people, so I couldn't really tell him to sod off. I tried to drop hints, but after a week or so I began to suspect that any hints subtler than a load of bricks would be lost on him.
So Tuesday evening rolled around, and sure enough, his name popped up and he started a conversation. By this point, I just wanted him to GO AWAY. So I thought a moment, and decided on a simple lie that would likely be terribly effective: I told him I had just found out I had herpes.

Go figure, I haven't heard from him since. ^.^

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